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This article presents a review of current developments in vocational education and training in Great Britain. Show less

Futuretrack is a longitudinal survey exploring the relationship between higher education, employment and career planning. Funded by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU) and led by a team of researchers at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, Futuretrack is tracking the cohort of students who applied to university through UCAS in 2005/06. Students will be surveyed four times over five years. The project explores why students decide to apply to higher education, how they choose their institution and course, and why they think higher education is a good investment. It also examines their attitudes to money, university careers services, extracurricular activities and unpaid work, and explores graduates' post-university experience of employment. In this paper we cover two important themes that have become central to [higher education] HE policy and practice: the growth of student employment, particularly during term, and the extent to which debt and anticipation of debt affect the experience of HE and the choices and aspirations that final year students had as they approached the transition to the next stage of their careers. Changes in funding arrangements for UK students shifted responsibility for HE investment from government to individual learners and their families, in particular, the introduction of variable tuition fees and repayable student loans for those who were deemed to be able to afford to contribute to the cost of their HE. There are means tested grants to enable students from lower, under-represented socio-economic backgrounds to enter HE, based on the assumption that previously excluded members of the population would be enabled to gain the long-term benefits of HE without being hampered by the burden of debt after graduation, but eligibility for these grants is relatively low and the amounts involved only cover basic costs incurred. Access to funding proved to play a role in determining whether students took paid employment during their courses and whether they had time for other activities. Most analysts have concluded that the increased financial pressure and higher levels of debt, particularly since the changes in HE funding arrangements introduced at the beginning of the 1990s have fostered an increase in students taking on paid work in parallel with their course-work during term (Humphrey, 2006; Callender and Wilkinson, 2003; Metcalf, 2003).

Excerpt from publication. Show less

This paper reports upon a research project which explores the potential strengths and weaknesses of a major longitudinal source of information on the labour market status of employees in Great Britain - the New Earnings Survey Panel Dataset (NESPD). Show less

Futuretrack is a longitudinal survey exploring the relationship between higher education, employment and career planning. Funded by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU) and led by a team of researchers at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, Futuretrack is tracking the cohort of students who applied to university through UCAS in 2005/06. Students will be surveyed four times over five years. The project explores why students decide to apply to higher education, how they choose their institution and course, and why they think higher education is a good investment. It also examines their attitudes to money, university careers services, extracurricular activities and unpaid work, and explores graduates’ post-university experience of employment. This working paper looks at two areas: (1) analysing the relationship between higher education participation and educational and career development patterns and outcomes; and (2) a new classification of higher education institutions.

Abstract from publisher’s website. Show less

Skills are at the heart of some of the UK's most pressing challenges: reducing inequality, improving our productivity, and implementing the net-zero transition. Ranging from the need for basic literacy and numeracy at work, to the application of complex scientific, medical, and technical expertise, the identification and development of the skills required for our future labour force is vital. Despite the importance of this requirement, the measurement and assessment of skills in the UK remains fragmented and deficient, and the language used to describe skills is inconsistent and unnecessarily complicated.

A classification of skills is essentially a comprehensive list of all the skills and associated knowledge required to carry out job-related tasks. When linked across occupations, qualifications and training courses, a classification becomes a powerful tool which can serve a variety of purposes, from job analysis and employee recruitment to careers advice and labour market analysis. It enables better matching between the needs of employers and the skills available in the workforce. It means that a 'skill shortage' can be both defined and identified with greater precision, enabling qualification and training providers to plan for the provision of specific skills. It provides careers guidance specialists with the tools and language to advise labour market entrants on the ways to achieve specific career pathways. From a statistical perspective, it makes possible the linking of information on skills from various sources.

This report details how the functional requirements for a classification of skills were identified and sets out how it will be developed to meet these needs in the UK.

Edited excerpts from publication and publisher's website. Show less

What has been happening in the graduate labour market over the last decade, and how have graduates fared since the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic changed how we live and work? This report covers two major investigations of graduates 10-11 years after they had completed undergraduate degrees at UK higher education institutions. The Futuretrack longitudinal research has tracked full-time students who embarked on higher education in 2006, following them through their courses, as they gained their first degrees in 2009 and 2010, through their early careers and now, in 2019 and 2020, into mid-career and the extraordinary experience of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Revisiting a large sample of these 2009/10 graduates who had last been surveyed in 2011/12, in 2019 the research team at the University of Warwick surveyed respondents and interviewed 200 of them in detail about their career experiences. They were then re-contacted again between September 2020 and January 2021 to investigate their experiences of the [COVID-19] pandemic restrictions and its economic impact on their work and careers.

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For almost two decades we have followed the progress of a large group of young people as they made their way through higher education and into the labour market. This study, known as Futuretrack, provides insights into the changing nature of work and its interaction with graduate careers. In March 2021 we published findings from what we term 'Stage 5' of the Futuretrack study, an investigation of graduate outcomes and career paths for a cohort of graduates who had embarked on undergraduate courses in 2006 and mainly completed their undergraduate studies in 2009 or 2010. This stage of the study covered the period from 2012 to late in 2019. Given that the global [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic struck early in 2020, this provided an opportunity to conduct what might be termed a 'before and after' study, giving a detailed account of how the pandemic and associated restrictions' have impacted upon the jobs and career prospects of this cohort.

Excerpts from publication. Show less

In 2005, the Higher Education Careers Service Unit (HECSU) launched a major program of research, designed to explore the process of entry into and through higher education in more detail than had hitherto been attempted. At the core of this program is a major longitudinal study, named Futuretrack, of all applicants to full-time UK higher education [HE] courses who applied through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) in 2006. Futuretrack is independent, interdisciplinary policy-related research on the relationship between higher education, career decision-making and labour market trends. It is being conducted by a research team at the Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick. This report presents analysis of the first stage: a census of 2006 applicants who applied through UCAS for full-time places in HE. These data lay the foundation for the longitudinal investigation that is scheduled to end, with a fourth survey, in Winter 2011-12; five years after most respondents embarked on their courses.

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Futuretrack is a longitudinal study of people who applied in 2005/06 for a full-time place in a UK higher education institution, to commence study in October 2006. This report is based on the Stage 4 survey, when the majority of respondents had completed three or four year undergraduate courses 18 or 30 months previously. Many of them, along with most of the sub-sample who had not obtained such degrees by full-time study, could be assumed to have achieved some degree of labour market integration. The Stage 4 questionnaire built on the earlier stages of the Futuretrack project. Its objective was to investigate graduates' evaluation of their [higher education] HE experience, the career and employment choices that faced them, the opportunities they had accessed, the extent to which their aspirations and plans at the start of their courses had changed or remained stable, had been realised or obstructed. We wanted to know what had influenced career planning and aspirations. Stage 4 was also an opportunity to explore how far prior educational and social advantage and disadvantage had been reinforced or had become less important during the process of HE, and the impact of studying in different types of [higher education institution] HEI and in different regions. We wanted to examine the relationships between the educational and cultural capital brought into HE, the impact of different types of HE experience, including the knowledge and skills developed in subjects and disciplines, the variables that led to satisfaction with the experience of HE and early career outcomes.

We know that graduate unemployment since 2009 has increased, in conjunction with UK unemployment generally: but which types of graduates have been unable to access appropriate employment and why? We have considered the graduate outcomes in relation to the economic climate they have entered. How far was it possible to assess whether their experiences could be attributed to the global recession, or give any indication that current patterns of integration are indicative of changing longer-term trends in the demand for the graduate labour? Finally, although the residual non-HE participant sub-sample was small, we hoped that it would be possible to make some evaluation of the differential impact of following an alternative path to full-time HE participation and investigate the experiences of those who had not obtained degrees. How had their careers developed, and how far did the longer experience of employment that most had acquired compare with the value of a degree in terms of relative earnings, access to opportunity and satisfaction with their current situations? For all categories of respondent, we asked them to evaluate their experiences, choices and opportunities, and how they envisaged their longer-term career prospects.

Excerpts from published executive summary. Show less

The National Skills Task Force has been established by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to assist him in developing a National Skills Agenda. The Task Force was asked to provide advice on the nature, extent and pattern of skill needs and shortages, including associated recruitment difficulties, how these are likely to change and what can be done to ease such problems. This paper is one of a series that has been commissioned to review and evaluate existing literature in a number of skills-related areas.

This paper considers issues relating to the measurement of skill for national statistical purposes, drawing on research leading to the revision of the national occupational classification for the United Kingdom (UK), SOC90. (Note: the revised classification will be referred to as SOC2000.) It aims to provide advice on the measurement of skill and the monitoring of change and to explain how the revised classification will affect the analysis of skill change and lead to a re-examination of forecasting of occupational structure. During the two-year revision process, perceived inadequacies were identified and the paper notes the major problems of definition that arose. Following the introduction, Section 2 presents a brief history of occupational classification in the UK. Section 3 describes the conceptual basis of the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC). Section 4 looks at problems with SOC90 and the constraints placed on the process. Section 5 briefly discusses the major processes of labour market change which shaped the revision. Section 6 identifies the sources and methods that were used in investigating occupational change. Section 7 presents an outline of the major changes to be introduced within SOC2000. Section 8 presents the authors' conclusions, in which they point out the difficulties caused by the speed of change in both skill areas and work organisation, but also maintain that this will be a better tool for the measurement of skill and for job-matching purposes.

Other research reports in this series are indexed from TD/TNC 62.633 to TD/TNC 62.650. Show less