"It was like learning for life": women's historical experiences of vocational education in the British coal industry

This paper deals with the historical experiences of women once employed in the British coal industry, a set of workers whose experiences are greatly under-researched and under-reported in both academic and policy literature on vocational education and training. Using the methods of oral history, it focuses on a particular set of women, all of whom undertook significant programmes of vocational education whilst employed at 'Carr House', a regional headquarters for the National Coal Board (NCB) in the north of England. On one hand, the data presented show their experiences were generally more positive in retrospect than as young workers attending college on a 'day-release' basis. But it also suggests that the women's experiences of vocational education provided them with a range of social and cultural benefits as well as career progression, both whilst working for the NCB and after leaving the coal industry. Whilst participants' words suggest that individual motivation and personal goals are important, the data also shows how learning is socially situated and developed via interdependent social relations in terms, for example, of connections with staff and students, via exposure to different forms of pedagogy, and through the provision of meaningful opportunities for career progression.