General transferable skills: context

(Transcript of a section of the General transferable skills report, 1998)

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The context within which discussion of general transferable skills occurs is threefold; the ideals of liberal education, the national agenda, and the specific employment market for law graduates. Each of these creates a pressure now for those designing law curricula to attend to the way in which the general transferable skills of students are being developed.

The ideals of liberal education

Liberal education has traditionally concerned itself with broadening horizons and facilitating individual personal development. Liberal education achieves its objectives both through the curriculum and through the broader range of learning experiences which are part of life in a university setting, for example in societies, union activities, argument with fellow students, and so on.

Liberal education is not preparation for any specific job, but a preparation for a critical, aware and responsible appreciation of what is happening in the world both at work and outside.

Understood in a narrow way, there is a distinction between operational skills required for the world of work and academic skills developed within higher education. The former are said to aim to achieve effect, utility and are basically strategic. The latter are critical and concerned with establishing a rational argument, and are not necessarily going to achieve improved production or commercial advantage.

Such a distinction is often also made between the values of the vocational and academic stages of legal education, but the distinction is too sharply drawn. Harvey and Mason suggest that the desirability of graduates in employment lies in their transformation potential, rather than in their specific knowledge.

The skills identified for the workplace are the critical and imaginative skills that are precisely those cherished by the liberal education tradition. The degree of preparation needed to make use of them in a specific occupational setting will be different from vocational to academic stages, but there is no need to exaggerate the distinction between academic and operational or vocational skills.

After all, the flexibility of the employment market and the changes in skill demands make it clear that specific preparation for immediate employment has limited value, since the workplace will change and the individual must adapt accordingly.

The national agenda

The Dearing Committee’s terms of reference included the instruction that “learning should be increasingly responsive to employment needs and include the development of general skills, widely valued in employment”.

Dearing’s response was to set as an objective that four key skills should be integral to student attainment in higher education; communication (which includes literacy), information technology, numeracy, and learning to learn. The government’s learning age consultation contains a slightly longer list, adding working with other people and problem-solving.

These lists are much shorter than proposals from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and others, but they focus carefully on the broad abilities necessary for employability in a range of fields.

The need to adapt within a specific profession and to change between professions as part of a career is now a commonplace understanding shaping national policy and views of the labour market. Now that over 30% of the standard age cohort is entering higher education and that over 50% of students entering higher education are from older, non-standard age groups, the role of mass higher education in the labour market is a legitimate concern of government, as well as of students and employers.

The development of general transferable skills is a way in which higher education is able to indicate that it is engaging with the national employability agenda.

The issue of broader skills development is reflected in ACLEC’s First report on legal education and training, which argues that one trend to be detected in current higher education is that:

The balance will shift from specific knowledge or skills in university degrees to generic ‘outcomes’, this being the inexorable consequence of modularisation; the single honours degree (for example in law) could be the exception rather than the rule; this in turn will affect the balance between the universities and the professional bodies in regulating the early years of higher education, with an erosion of the distinction between ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ stages as students become able to follow novel, even customised packages; the influence of NVQs will have a similar effect. (para 2.1)

The ACLEC Report also emphasises the role of legal education (as a whole) as a liberal discipline and an excellent preparation for many high level careers. Legal education at all stages must be able to equip students to move to a number of different exit points, not just becoming a barrister and solicitor.

Indeed, what is involved in being a barrister or solicitor is likely to undergo radical change in the course of a career in any case. General transferable skills offers a focus for the promotion of the generic outcomes described which will provide a variety of exit points.

The state of the legal employment market

Among the concerns driving the ACLEC Report’s approach was the recognition that law students, whether on undergraduate law degrees, the Common Professional Examination (CPE) or the vocational stage courses, no longer have a guaranteed chance of employment by the legal professions to which they aspire.

Analysis of the data on LLB graduates from Leeds University (1995), Sheffield University (1994) and Leeds Metropolitan University (1994) reveal the following patterns. (The last column is taken from the Harris Survey of career intentions of students in law schools.)  

	Leeds	Sheffield	Leeds Met
Total LLB Graduates (respondents)	128	155	40
Professional Study	83 (64.8%)	92 (59.4%)	27 (67.5%)
Permanent Employment	12 (9.4%)	5 (3.2%)	3 (7.5%)
Temporary Employment	14 (10.9%)	6 (5.8%)	1 (2.5%)
Further Degrees	9 (7%)	10 (9.7%)	6 (15%)
Unemployed	10 (7.8%)	3 (2%)	3 (7.5%)

	Harris Survey
Group Surveyed	34 universities
Legal Professions	59.54%
Central/local Government.	3.37%
Commerce	7.39%
Further Study/academia	9.45%
Other/not Known	19.77%

Similar figures come from national studies. The Policy Study Institutes report on Entry into the legal professions suggested that, while a fifth of those who had completed their law degree/CPE course said they were considering a non-legal career, less than 8% had finally decided on a career outside the law.

Employment figures suggest that of the 12,500 law graduates in England and Wales and 2000 CPE students only 66% will be able to enter the vocational courses (the Legal Practice Course and the Bar Vocational Course), for which there are about 8700 places. Of these, only about half will be able to take up the 4000 traineeships and the 800 pupillages available.

Thus, in crude terms, there are only training and pupillage places for 33% of LLB and CPE graduates. Although there may be more of a balance between supply and demand at the end of the vocational stage, the implication is clear. Study of law at vocational or academic stages is not to be seen simply as a preparation for a career in law. The general transferable skills gained are those which will be relevant to the majority of students, whatever their career destination.

Last Modified: 30 June 2010