The Secretary of State has announced six new Opportunity Areas in England, where they will focus the Department for Education’s energy, ideas and resources on providing children and young people with the chances and choices to fulfil their potential. The Opportunity Areas that were announced were West Somerset, Blackpool, Derby, Oldham, Scarborough and Norwich.

Warwick IER hopes to engage in further dialogue and practice developments given its track record in labour market intelligence and information, careers policy, research and practice.

The Nominet Trust has published a state of the art review undertaken by IER on Employment and the Internet. The report provides a baseline of data around employment and digital technology, mapping emerging employment patterns that may provide opportunities to rethink how we address current levels of unemployment and underemployment.

The report is available to download from the Nominet website.

IER welcomes two visitors from the Czech Republic this week (17/18 May). Ludvik Michalicka and Oleksandr Stupnytskyy from RILSA (Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs) will visit the IER to discuss local economic modelling and forecasting. Rob Wilson will be providing information about the IER’s LEFM approach. Further details of the project can be found at:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/rlmforecastingmodel/

Dr Weiping Shi (East China Normal University) and Dr Hong Lu (Chongqing College of Electronic Engineering) will visit IER week commencing 19 March to participate in a series of meetings and presentations in the area of vocational education and training.