IER News & blogs

IER's Anne Green attended and was a speaker in the opening panel session at the 'Better Jobs, Better Business' national conference in Leeds on 10 March. The conference was hosted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in partnership with Leeds City Council, Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership, the British Hospitality Association, the British Retail Consortium, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, CIPD and PwC. The event marked the launch of the report 'Improving progression from low-paid jobs at city-region level' co-authored by Anne, Paul Sissons and Jenny Ferreria at Coventry University, Kathryn Ray from the Learning and Work Institute and Ceri Hughes from the New Policy Institute.

An interim report on decent work has been published by Oxfam and the University of Scotland in collaboration with Warwick Institute for Employment Research. The report, co-authored by Sally Wright of IER, examines what low paid, low skilled workers in Scotland want from jobs. The report, What Makes For Decent Work?, can be freely downloaded.

Lynn Gambin will be chairing the second session at a Policy-UK forum on 10th March 2016 at the Royal Society of Chemistry, London. The forum, 'Creating a generaton of Apprentices - funding, quality and a route to employment', is scheduled to coincide with National Apprenticeship Week 2016 and will provide delegates with an opportunity to hear the latest progress and policy priorities aimed at ensuring young people have the skills required by employers. With the Government committed to creating 3 million new apprenticeships by 2020, this for will consider how these new apprenticeships will be funded, what can be done to ensure their quality, particularly since concerns have been raised by Ofsted about the number of apprenticeships being awarded for ‘low-level’ skills (examples include tea making and cleaning floors), as well as how to encourage more employers to provide training and qualifications for young people, including the success of Trailblazer groups. Delegates will also discuss the availability of Higher Level apprenticeships and how their status can be improved and recognised as an alternative to university, as well as assessing whether the post-apprenticeship route into employment is adequately defined and supported.

IER's Lynn Gambin will chair the second half of the event which includes sessions entitled 'Are apprenticeships delivering for young people?' and 'What employers want - do apprenticeships address the skills shortage?'.

Details of the event can be found at here.

The ESRC Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Warwick, one of 21 such centres in the UK, embodies the university’s commitment to producing the next generation of leaders in social science research. Internationally renowned for its research excellence, the University of Warwick is now inviting applications for an ESRC-funded Collaborative PhD Studentship hosted at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research in association with our collaborative partner organisation Adviza. The PhD on the use of information communications technology (ICT) and labour market intelligence (LMI) in careers education and guidance will commence in October 2016. Find out how to apply by going to the IER website.

IER warmly welcomes Sudipa Sarkar from the University of Salamanca in Spain, who will be a Visiting Fellow until June.

Sudipa is a labour economist with additional interests in the economics of education and development economics. She has published a number of articles on poverty, skills and occupational change in India and also a report on pay and job quality in India for Eurofound, where she was working part of last year. Sudipa will be working with a number of colleagues in IER over the next few months.