IER News & blogs
BIS Report on Technical Apprenticeships
A report on the demand for and supply of technical apprenticeships was published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on 31st March 2014. The report, entitled , was co-authored by Terence Hogarth and Lynn Gambin from IER and researchers from Sheffield Hallam University.
The report suggests that there is a lean system of skills supply in place for technician-type skills. Supply and demand are currently finely balanced with employers expressing concern that that any marked increase in demand, which may arise as a consequence of the economic recovery and the commissioning of major infrastructure projects, may result in the emergence of skills shortages.
The study involved interviews with employers, training providers and various stakeholders across England and considers a number of industrial sectors where technical apprenticeships comprise an important part of skills development.
More on IER's programme of research on apprenticeships can be found at:
桃色视频 Institute for Employment Research seeks to appoint a Research Fellow to work on the ESRC-funded project ‘Precarious Pathways of Young People into Employment’: an interdisciplinary study focused on the Midlands, to work as part of a team of researchers located at the Universities of 桃色视频, Aston, Leicester and the Open University.
This is a 3-year fixed-term post, starting from June 2014.
Latest IER report on Apprenticeship considers employer response to funding reforms
A new report by researchers from IER and IFF Research has been published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The report, 'Employer Routed Funding: Employer responses to funding reform' (BIS Research Paper Number 161), explores how employers’ engagement with the apprenticeship programme would vary depending on how funding is reformed.
Occupational Coding in Multi-national Surveys
A research team at IER is developing a multi-lingual software tool for coding occupations using several European languages. CASCOT software, which has been in use for over ten years, has been extended to include Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Slovakian and Spanish versions. There are plans to add other languages. The tool uses ISCO-08 as the main classification. This development is being undertaken as part of the EC FP7 project DASISH - Data Service Infrastructure for the Social Sciences and Humanities.
In the context of this work, Margaret Birch and Ritva Ellison gave a presentation entitled ‘CASCOT and the Coding of Occupations in European Surveys’ on 10 February 2014 at the InGRID (Inclusive Growth Research Infrastructure Diffusion) workshop organised by the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
A Workshop partially funded by the DASISH project will take place on 10-11 April 2014 in Venice. This event will provide participants with the opportunity to test the coding tool in their own language and contribute to fine-tuning the coding process. For more information on the Venice Workshop, please contact Margaret Birch (M.E.Birch@warwick.ac.uk).
Professor Anne Green was interviewed for BBC Midlands today. Anne comments on the the falling levels of unemployment in the West Midlands and what it means for young people who are still at a higher risk of being unemployed.