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.

IER and Cambridge Econometrics are currently undertaking a review of the literature looking at seven key methodological issues in estimating returns to Higher Education, Further Education and Skills. The project is sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

As a part of the project, a one day workshop is being hosted at the University of Warwick and is being chaired by Prof Peter Elias (IER). A number of academics will come together to hear findings from the review and to discuss their views and experiences of these issues. The aim of the study and the workshop is to set forth recommendations for BIS (and others) to utilise in future analysis so that the estimated economic value added of different forms of learning are robust and representative of the true underlying returns.

A statement by Terence Hogarth and Lynn Gambin put together in response to the Richard Review of Apprenticeships has been published in the latest issue of the NIACE Adults Learning journal (along with statements from a number of other experts in this area). The report is available here.

This week IER welcomes Dr Kelly Kuang and Sophie Perdrix who will be working and collaborating with Professor Alan Brown and Professor Jenny Bimrose.

Dr Kelly Kuang is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Vocational and Adult Education at East China Normal University. Kelly will be spending a year at the Institute, supported by a China Council Scholarship. Her research interests are focused on tertiary vocational education and training, in particular workplace learning/work based learning, modern apprenticeship and comparative studies of vocational education and training.

Sophie Perdrix is a doctoral student in the field of vocational psychology and career counselling at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She has been working for three years on an empirical longitudinal study investigating the effectiveness of a career counselling intervention. She will be visiting the Institute until the middle of January.