Peter Dickinson, Senior Research Fellow at IER, has been appointed to the What Works Growth’s Evaluation Panel. The panel provides advice and support to central and local government on the design and implementation of evaluations of local economic policies. It helps ensure evaluations are high quality and supports policymakers in developing their evaluation skills, knowledge and capacity. Over the longer term, it will also expand the evidence have about ‘what works’.

Peter has also been appointed to the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) roster of consultants providing advice, expertise and support on skills policy and practice.

Erika Kispeter gave a talk at the Westminster Higher Education Policy Conference online event entitled ‘The graduate labour market post COVID-19' on 20 October 2020. The conference focused on how university careers services, employers and governments should prepare students for employment in the UK in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Erika’s talk on the 'The impact of postgraduate qualifications on employment prospects' drew on the results of the recently completed research project 'Degrees of Advantage? A longer-term investigation of the careers of UK graduates', the latest stage of Futuretrack, IER’s longitudinal study of graduate careers. The study follows a cohort of UK graduates who started their university education in 2006.

Working Futures 2017-2027 projections for the Economic Regions of Wales are now available. Read the report, published by the Welsh government, here and access the Excel workbooks from the sub-regional projections link here.

Please note that these projections were created when it was expected there would be a negotiated Brexit and before the Covid-19 pandemic, which may result in considerable disruption to the UK and world economic system.

New research on the educational psychology (EP) workforce conducted by the IER on behalf of the Department for Education (DfE) is now available online.

The report draws on mixed-methods research to map the current distribution and demographic profile of the Local Authority (LA) EP workforce in England and, where possible, also the non-LA EP workforce. It provides evidence on factors driving shortages of trainee and qualified EPs in LAs facing recruitment and retention difficulties. It also makes recommendations on the current training model for EPs.

In September IER hosted a second cohort of labour market officials from the Nigerian Government’s Industrial Training Fund. The visitors receive training in the labour market data and analysis techniques developed by IER, covering: higher and vocational education; labour market classification, measurement and forecasting; and careers guidance and labour market information for all. The aim is to help build greater capacity in labour market analysis in Nigeria as the country seeks to diversify its economic base.