Over the past decade, government has attempted to impose by statute a form of
professionalism on the further education sector through the development of
national occupational standards for teaching staff. As successive reports by
Ofsted and academic research have shown, this endeavour has failed to
achieve consistency in the diverse provision for acquiring vocational knowledge
and skills. In comparison with arrangements in both schools and higher
education, the initial training of lecturers and their continuous professional
updating in further education are too often reported by those involved to be both
haphazard and onerous