IER News & blogs

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.

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.

Internationally, the Institute for Employment Research has informed and shaped policy debate and practice on career development services in response to political, economic, technological and social changes. Our research has resulted in new policy frameworks for systems design and delivery of careers services; and has informed professional development in careers policy, research and practice. A summary of the labour market information (LMI) impact case study produced by Professor Jenny Bimrose and others from IER is now available.

Lynn Gambin is to visit Memorial University of Newfoundland's Department of Economics and Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, where a "Synergy Session" is being held on Employer investment in apprenticeships and work-based learning.

Lynn will lead a discussion on what can be learned from a major study of UK-based apprenticeship programmes (commissioned by the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) which aimed to identify the costs and benefits employers derive from Apprenticeships and, more broadly, workplace learning (WPL) in England. With skilled labour shortages affecting many sectors in the province's booming economy, apprenticeship programmes are a hot topic.