Stealing the skills agenda? Devolution, business and post-16 education and training in Wales

This article considers the role of business interests within the devolved political and governmental arrangements introduced by New Labour. We focus on the involvement of business in shaping post-16 education and training policy in Wales. Continuities apparent in the process of devolution across its administrative and political forms have produced a distinctive Welsh political economy involving public sector-dominated policy agendas periodically punctured by specific business interests. Devolution appears to have underlined such continuities. An increased imperviousness of public sector-dominated post-16 education and training strategy-making to business interests coexists with the ability of specific business interests to distort such strategies at an operational level.