Katie Hollingworth.

Young people who have been in care face significant obstacles as they make the transition into adulthood. Statistics on the outcomes for this group are troubling. Almost 40% of care experienced young people are not in education, training or employment at ages 19-21, compared with 13% of the age group overall.

Yet it is essential for these young people to have the rich range of opportunities available to others, to work in industry, government and the arts. Programmes such as ‘Tracing our Tales’, an art-based training scheme run by the Foundling Museum are making this possible.

Improving outcomes for care experienced young people is a key policy area (more…)

Domini Bingham. 

Ageism is a dirty word, stretching across workplaces and society as a whole. Even if in principle equality and diversity are established by the law, the reality can be different, and a number of factors are in play. For example, it appears older workers are often passed over for learning opportunities, even if unconsciously so, despite wanting to continue working and developing.

Empowering older workers through learning and development turns ageing in workplaces on its head. In my new book, Older Workforces: Re-imagining Later Life Learning, l seek to re-imagine how workplaces could capitalise on older workers’ (more…)

John Morgan. 
The Guardian Education section last week published a profile of Michael Young, Professor of the Sociology of Education at UCL. Its author, Peter Wilby, charts what he saw as Young’s dramatic shift from countercultural figure on the educational left to alleged supporter of Michael Gove’s narrow view of the National Curriculum.
Wilby reverts to what has been described as the default settings of educational discourse in England, whereby to be in favour of the dissolution of subject boundaries is to be “progressive”, whilst to be in favour of strong subject boundaries is seen to be at best “traditional”, and at worst, “Conservative”. This could not be further from the truth. As Wilby acknowledges, Michael Young has always sought to advance the socialistcause in education.
The fact that he (more…)

Rebekah Hayes. 
Despite numerous campaigns over many years, getting more students to study physics after GCSE remains a huge challenge. The proportion of students in the UK taking physics at A level is noticeably lower than those studying other sciences. This low uptake of physics, particularly by girls, has implications not only for the national economy, but for equity, especially as it can be a valuable route to prestigious, well-paid careers.
The latest research from ASPIRES 2 explores why students do or do not continue with physics by focusing on students who could have chosen physics, but opted for other sciences instead.
ASPIRES 2 is a 10-year longitudinal study, tracking children’s science and career aspirations from ages 10–19. This briefing focuses on data collected when students were (more…)

Science Capital Team. 
To continue with science post-16, young people must achieve certain levels of understanding and attainment. Crucially, they must also feel that science is a good ‘fit’ for them – that science is ‘for me’.
Drawing on more than five years of research conducted by the Enterprising Science project in classrooms and out-of-school settings, the team have developed five key recommendations for policy-makers and funders who want to broaden and increase young people’s engagement with science. These recommendations are set out in Improving Science Participation, a new publication (more…)

IOE Events. 
Vocational education suffers from its second class status – variously seen as a ‘consolation prize’ and ‘for other people’s children’. It deserves better – for its own sake and for the sake of social justice, but also, as the speakers at the IOE’s second ‘What if…’ event this week noted, for the sake of our economy.
As Tony Little, chief academic officer of GEMS Education and former headmaster of Eton, remarked, ‘we’re preparing our army for the last war’; the economy and labour market are changing fast, and young people need a broader education. As evidenced by November’s Budget and Industrial Strategy, the government itself seems to have woken from its slumber on skills, and vocational education’s time has come (again). We have been here before, of course, so how can things be different this time around?
Also responding to the question, What if… we really wanted to overcome the academic-vocational divide? were (more…)

Francis Green. 
The OECD and the Institute for Public Policy Research came together this week to launch complementary reports on Britain’s long-term skills problem and what should be done about it. The event unfurled in august surroundings, at the offices of JP Morgan, in the old hall of what used to be the City of London School. Both reports were looking at an uphill task. Britain’s productivity has stagnated for the last decade, while wages have been coming down in real terms. Britain’s skills problems have been around for much longer. The government’s policy for addressing this is embodied in its Industrial Strategy, of which skills policy is one of ten ‘pillars’. This is where schools, FE colleges and universities come in.
The IPPR report identifies three problematic aspects of Britain’s skills system:

• skills produced are insufficiently valued and utilised in the workplace;
• the lack of high-quality vocational training and education provision; and
• a failure to tackle regional and social inequalities.

It is not hard to substantiate these claims. For example, Britain has one of the most (more…)

Alex Bryson and John Forth. 
New research we have conducted for the TUC finds Britain’s trade unions play a vital role in securing a work-life balance for employees.
According to the most authoritative workplace survey in Britain, three-quarters of workplace managers agree or strongly agree that “it is up to individual employees to balance work and family responsibilities” (Bryson and Forth, 2017a). The percentage agreeing has risen since the early 2000s (Van Wanrooy et al., 2013), even though more regulations aimed at improving work-life balance – such as a right to request flexible working – have come into force. So it is, perhaps, no wonder that British workers look on in envy at the rights to extended paid leave and other statutory supports to work-life (more…)

Francis Green. 
Especially since the surge in university and college enrolments around 1990, Britain’s workforce has become very much more educated. The proportion with tertiary (post-school) qualifications has been rising very fast – at roughly one percentage point per year (see diagram).
And we can say confidently that the stock of highly-educated workers is going to go on rising for many years. In 2015 the tertiary education gap between the cohort of 30-34 year-old “millennials” and the cohort of 50-64 year-olds was 21 percentage points. As the older group starts to retire, the overall education level of the workforce is sure to increase.
The question is, if the level goes on rising will our college and university leavers continue (more…)

Alex Bryson and John Forth. 
Should we be paying public servants more? Some have expressed disquiet over the long-term sustainability of the 1% cap on pay settlements first introduced in 2010 and due to continue until 2019/20. Independent experts who advise government on setting pay for the 2.5 million public servants covered by Pay Review Bodies (PRBs) have cited pay restraint as a reason for the difficulties recruiting and retaining high quality staff to deliver health services, education and other public services.
This week the Office of Manpower Economics, the body supporting PRBs, published a report commissioned from us, into trends in public sector pay. The report tracks average real earnings within each of 394 occupations over the period 2005-2015, (more…)