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The individual learning account experiment in the UK: A conjunctural crisis?

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  • Lee, Bill

Abstract

Individual learning accounts (ILAs) were a flagship policy of the 1997 Labour Government in the UK. ILAs provided a new universal right for all adults to receive State financial support to pursue lifelong learning that was delivered through markets in ways consistent with the prevailing neo-liberal hegemony. The scheme was suspended following allegations of fraud and abandoned after regulators of markets associated with the neo-liberal hegemony published reports. An analysis of these reports is used to highlight how they failed to emphasise the positive and novel universal right of financial support from ILAs, but instead criticised the adoption of light-touch accounting controls and gave these as a reason for fraud being possible and over-expenditure. Subsequently, when a replacement scheme was introduced, the novel principle of universal financial support was abandoned. Gramsci's concept of a conjunctural crisis is used to explain the abandonment of the novel element of ILAs while the neo-liberal hegemony endured.

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  • Lee, Bill, 2010. "The individual learning account experiment in the UK: A conjunctural crisis?," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 18-30.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:21:y:2010:i:1:p:18-30
    DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2009.09.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Bill Lee & Catherine Cassell, 2008. "Employee and social reporting as a war of position and the union learning representative initiative in the UK," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(4), pages 276-287, December.
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    8. Lee, Bill & Cassell, Catherine, 2008. "Employee and social reporting as a war of position and the union learning representative initiative in the UK," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 276-287.
    9. Spence, Crawford, 2009. "Social accounting's emancipatory potential: A Gramscian critique," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 205-227.
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    Cited by:

    1. Lee, Bill & Cassell, Catherine, 2017. "Facilitative reforms, democratic accountability, social accounting and learning representative initiatives," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 24-37.
    2. Lee, Bill & Carlisle, Liam, 2024. "Interpreting an escape from an eviction trap as a social account: A Gramscian reading of a credit union’s policies in support of social housing tenants," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    3. Walaa Wahid ElKelish*, 2023. "Accounting for Corporate Human Rights: Literature Review and Future Insights," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 33(2), pages 203-226, June.

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