Hans Dietrich, Golo Henseke, Juliane Achatz, Silke Anger, Bernhard Christoph, Alexander Patzina.

Despite economic and institutional differences between the two countries, youth unemployment figures in both the UK and Germany rose during the Covid-19 pandemic and reached a peak in August 2020. Since then, they have generally gone down in both countries. Three aspects are important in this regard: the total number of unemployed youth, the pattern of how young people enter into unemployment, and the length of time they remain unemployed. Our new analysis shows that not only have more young people lost their jobs, they have also spent more time out of work. Despite these similar patterns, youth unemployment in the UK has remained consistently higher than in Germany.

This two-country analysis is part of a broader European perspective.

The development of youth unemployment during the Covid-19 pandemic

After the 2008 recession, the number of young unemployed in the European Union and most member states fell from 2013 to 2019. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic (more…)

Matteo Tiratelli.

In the summer of 2014, I was called for jury service at the Inner London Crown Court. At the time, trials relating to the 2011 riots in England were still working their way through the court system, and one of my first cases involved a man who had been arrested near the site of the riots in Croydon, south London.

The original trial had broken down when the last set of jurors were given the man’s rucksack to examine and promptly discovered that the items contained within it didn’t match the police’s inventory. At the retrial, the police skirted over these investigatory errors. The jury eventually reached a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

This is just one example of the 3,000 plus arrests made in the wake of the English riots of 2011. But, for those not personally involved, one of the most remarkable things about those events was how (more…)

Ingrid Schoon, Golo Henseke.

What are the career expectations of young people aged 16-25 in the current climate of economic uncertainty – and how do schools prepare them for the transition into the labour market in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic? These questions are examined in a new report out today (July 21). The report is part of a large-scale project to track youth employment, learning, career development and wellbeing during the pandemic in the UK and abroad.

Career expectations

Based on data collected in March and again in May 2021 from a representative sample of 1,542 16 to 25-year-olds in Britain we find that young people have ambitious educational and occupational goals, although there are high levels of uncertainty about future careers.

Young people who had formal career preparation, such as (more…)

Golo Henseke, Ingrid Schoon.

Today is World Youth Skills Day and this year it’s more important than ever.

From the start of the first lockdown in March 2020, young people’s prospects worsened significantly across many areas of their lives. Alongside challenges to wellbeing, young people were confronted with lost learning at school, colleges and universities, heightened labour market uncertainty, and a potential decline in internships and work experience placements.

While lost learning at primary and secondary level received significant attention, the impact of lost job skills learning and career preparation for young people has been largely missing from the conversation.

In a new report, which will be out on July 21, we shed light on young people’s career readiness and how it might affect their behaviour as they begin navigating an uncertain labour market. The report is part of a large-scale project to track youth employment, (more…)

annawaldl / Pixabay

Claire Cameron, Peter Moss and Pat Petrie. 

Social care has been in crisis for years, now made even worse by the pandemic. All agree something must be done, many ‘urging the Government to act now’ – but we are still waiting. What can be done? The problem with ‘social care’ and a promising solution are the subjects of a new article we have published in the International Journal of Social Pedagogy.

In it, we argue that ‘working with people’ should become a rewarding, well qualified and properly funded enterprise, with a highly skilled workforce, and ask why Britain has taken such a different path from much of Europe.

The social care crisis is driven by several factors. ‘Social care’ covers a plethora of services for children and adults including elderly people with additional needs; working-age adults with mental and physical disabilities; and children and adolescents unable to live with their birth parents, assessed as ‘in need’ or subject to child protection (more…)

Wendelin_Jacober / Pixabay

Claire Cameron, Jo Van Herwegen, Mark Mon-Williams, Aase Villadsen.

“Covid 19 constitutes the greatest crisis that high-income countries have seen in many generations,” says UNICEF in its recent analysis. And children “are among those at greatest risk of seeing their living standards fall and their personal well-being decline”.

This, in turn, threatens to broaden the group of children at risk of exclusion – not just for misbehaviour, but because they have needs that are not being met. The danger is that, in the pandemic’s aftermath, we focus on ‘catch up’ learning for the relatively advantaged, and neglect the long-term health, wellbeing, and competency benefits of inclusive education for all students – especially those who are poor and ‘near poor’.

Now is the time to think how we can organise structures, services, and systems in every school so that all (more…)

geralt / Pixabay

Nicole Brown.

If the pandemic has taught us all one thing, it is that disabilities come in many forms. Covid-19 has meant that personal experiences of mental health issues, long-term fatigue and persistent pain have become more prevalent.

Although awareness of the difficulties that disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent staff and students face in academia has increased over the past few years, few attempts have been made to share, theorise and learn from these experiences. My new books Ableism in Academia: Theorising experiences of disabilities and chronic illnesses in higher education and Lived Experiences of Ableism in Academia: Strategies for inclusion in higher education do just that.

Unfortunately, the reality of being disabled, chronically ill and/or neurodivergent in academia means that many highly talented individuals drop out. This is because the structures of academia are built on the productivity, efficiency and (more…)

Gwyneth Hughes.

The start of the pandemic in March 2020 caused universities to do a rapid pivot from the well-entrenched invigilated, timed, unseen exams to online tests mostly taken at home.

Software can monitor students taking exams in their own homes by using video or proctoring methods, or by locking down the examinee’s computer. But by far the most straightforward option is open book exams with extended timescales. This is mostly what happened at the University of London. But does this mean better assessment or more cheating?

For an open-book exam, students can search online and access books, notes, and other available resources online or in print. If the exam writing window remains (more…)

chezbeate / Pixabay

Bea Herbert, Chris Bagley, Vivian Hill, Jaspar Khawaja.

As part of Mental Health Awareness week, the Government has announced £17 million to increase training and resources in schools and colleges to support children and young people’s mental health. However, without addressing the broader social circumstances that cause poor mental health, it is unlikely that such policies will resolve the growing mental health crisis.

Furthermore, to be effective, these interventions must be informed by young people’s perspectives about issues affecting their mental health and well-being.

The mental health charity States of Mind and the IOE’s Doctoral programme in Educational Psychology (DEdPsy) have been working together to elicit the voices of children and young people about how their educational experiences influence their mental health and well-being in a project called Education Futures in Action. We believe that understanding the causes of psychological distress, rather than just treating their symptoms, requires much greater attention, and must include young people’s perspectives in order (more…)

Jessica Ringrose, Ruth Eliot, Sophie Whitehead, Amelia Jenkinson, Kaitlynn Mendes & Tanya Horeck.

In recent weeks, allegations of peer-on peer sexual violence in schools, colleges and universities across the UK have been hailed as a ‘#Metoo’ moment for young people. The scale and severity of survivors’ testimonies has sparked shock and outrage amongst the commentariat, news media, parents and many education professionals.

We are a feminist consortium of sex educators – who spend a lot of time talking about sex, relationships, consent and intimacy in school – and academics who have been researching gender, education and social justice for decades. We are not surprised by the testimonies submitted to Everyone’s Invited, and really, no one should be. Not just because teenage girls everywhere have been demanding change for years. Or because just back in 2016, a Women and Equalities Committee inquiry revealed endemic sexual harassment in UK schools. But also because we must recognise that schools are a microcosm of society, including rape culture.

Part of the reason for the shocked response, we believe, is because listening to survivor testimonies forces us to (more…)