This paper will present findings from projects being undertaken in two city regions in England.  The projects form part of the research programme of the LLAKES research centre (funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council), which examines the role of education and training systems in mediating between competitiveness and social cohesion agendas.  Across the EU, the role of vocational education and training (VET) is under intense scrutiny in the light of major economic, technological, and broader societal change (Guile 2010a). As well as demands for VET to be more responsive to the needs of enterprises and to be more pedagogically innovative, some countries, including the UK, use government-funded VET programmes to further their social inclusion and cohesion goals (Guile 2010b). These potentially conflicting demands disturb the neat configurations of VET sought and displayed by policymakers, employers, and some VET teachers and trainers. Yet, the challenge of aligning economic and social goals can encourage innovative forms of VET, which more closely reflect economic and social realities (Fuller et al 2010). This paper argues that it is through investigating the ways in which VET-related initiatives at the meso-level (i.e. within sectors and communities as opposed to national system level) are being generated in response to economic and social pressures that we can develop new theoretical and conceptual ideas about the role and nature of VET in contemporary societies.

The research on which this paper draws is being conducted in two English city-regions: Manchester (North West); and Southampton (South East).  They provide diversity in terms of their population mix, patterns of educational attainment, significant and persistent areas of deprivation, local government configurations, and approaches to economic transformation. They also reflect the struggle to move away from what Beyers (2002) calls the concentrated geography of the ‘old economy’ to that of the much more dispersed geography of the ‘new’ (see also, Turok and Robson 2007).  Both cities have undergone considerable change in the past four decades and are engaged in extensive regeneration programmes to create jobs, increase their stocks of skills, and foster social cohesion.  One of their strategies is to create different forms of apprenticeship.  In Manchester, the City Council is using planning powers to bind a private national building firm in to offering apprenticeships to local 16-18 year olds, classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training), as part of its contract for construct a housing development in a deprived area of the city.  The Council is also involved in a very different form of apprenticeship devised by the BBC and an intermediary sector-based agency to prepare young people for self-employment (temporary contract-based) in the media industry. In Southampton, a network of large local employers (comprising the City Council, the NHS and a University) has developed a scheme to provide apprenticeships in their own organisations to local unemployed adults (aged 19-24) in a range of sectors including health, business administration and engineering. The paper compares and contrasts these initiatives and examines the extent to which they are sustainable and capable of meeting both economic and social goals in city regions in Europe.

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