'Skills policy in Britain and the future of work: a historical-political analysis' by Tom Bewick - JVET

New review from me: I review Tom Bewick's excellent Skills Policy in Britain and the Future of Work (2025) for JVET - Tom's critical and personal view is an insightful diagnosis of the centralising impulses of policymaking which constrain the imagination of skills policy; it will surely be a formative text for anyone looking to find their way through British skills policy and its history and consider its future (I certainly have already found it enormously useful for Edge's Learning from the Past series). In the review, I try and locate it within the historiography of modern British history. Read the full review:

Patel, J. (2026). Skills policy in Britain and the future of work: a historical-political analysis: by Tom Bewick, Bristol, Policy Press, 2025, 305 pp., £32.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781447372226. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2026.2687892

I also particularly liked Tom's recent post on the incoming Burnham premiership, and I greatly admire the optimism and I think it takes up many of the points I raised as important in the review. Though like my view on Skills Policy, I suspect Tom is more confident in identifying the problem will lead to the crystallisation of a solution. I am not convinced that the actions of enlightened leadership are enough to countervail the epistemic tensions between democratic accountability through the Treasury and the crisis of public trust in the judgment of institutions and professionals.