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Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) face many barriers to their education, from resources or spaces being inaccessible to a lack of teaching differentiation to support their learning. Beyond school, these difficulties continue with many struggling to move into training, employment, as well as facing difficulties sustaining meaningful work. This report examines three case studies and how each supports young people with SEND on their journey into employment. The case studies included are St Martins School, their Sixth Form offering at Horizons, and their internship scheme with DFN Project SEARCH. The Edge Foundation visited the school, sixth form and hospital in March 2020 to gain insight into their practice and to speak to the teachers, young people and hospital staff. The aim is to breakdown some of these barriers and help young people with disabilities transition into the world of work, to ensure their backgrounds do not further disadvantage their life chances.

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The construction sector is crucial for the drive towards net zero, a greener economy, and a greener future, and is one of the key industries highlighted in the recently published Green Jobs Taskforce report [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 145.219]. This focus is understandable given buildings are responsible for a substantial proportion of global carbon emissions during their construction and throughout their lifetime via their energy consumption. The need for green technology deployment leads to a focus on skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects or technical skills linked with specific emerging technologies. However, STEM skills are not the only ones that are needed; good communication, leadership skills, professional integrity, general business and administrative skills are also required. Understanding the skills required, demanded, supplied and deployed for a greener economy is essential.

This report, therefore, maps out the relationship between the skills required for a greener future in construction and the education and training landscape. It is the result of a literature review, document analysis, and a stakeholder workshop with 40 participants providing insights into the issues surrounding the supply of employees with both the technical skills to engage with relevant green technologies and the broader employability, interpersonal and flexible skills to work in a transforming industry such as the construction sector.

The key outcomes of this research are: (1) a broader conceptualisation of the skills required for a greener future - a simple focus on only technical skills fails to capture the demands of complex building sites and the need for greener construction and business practices; therefore, in relation to both initial training and [continuing professional development] CPD, education and training programmes should aim to work with the following framework: (a) an emphasis on CPD; (b) training structures and incentives for SMEs, micro businesses, and self-employed contractors as CPD means time away from site, which is challenging and costly and often hits smaller organisations hardest, so there is a need to provide meaningful incentives for CPD, potentially compensation, and to structure ongoing education and training at times that will fit around standard working days; and (c) CPD for those involved in delivering training; (2) stronger strategic partnership arrangements between skills providers and industry with more effective working relationships between [further education] FE colleges and employers so that emerging skills needs can be responded to within the skills formation system in an agile manner and the pathways through initial training and CPD can be drastically simplified; and (3) greater regulation - the construction industry in the UK and associated education and training pathways are relatively unregulated compared to other international skills systems; closer regulation would both ensure skills demands are being appropriately met while also contributing to driving the changes in culture and practice required for a more sustainable future.

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Context: The context for this paper is strongly underpinned by the significance of the integration of education and the world of work, which has been recognised as a key issue for policy, practice and research across Europe and beyond.

Approach: The four interrelated symposium papers focus on the complexities of work-based learning and explore its different configurations. The potential of a social ecological approach for exploring the relationships between work and learning will be considered. The papers will further draw on perspectives from three European countries: Germany, Latvia and the UK.

Findings: Through these three cross-national case studies, the context of the workplace has been considered as a crucial indicator of different dimensions of work-related learning. The papers identify some influential interdependent and embedded processes involved, such as the consolidation of theory and practice, digitalisation, personalised workplace learning patterns and crossing boundaries between different sectors, approaches and learning routes such as work-based and Higher Education. In these processes, the central place of agency of the learning individual, needs to be taken into account, and the social ecological approach provides a useful framework to capture the interdependent, relational and contextually embedded developments involved.

Conclusion: Through these three case studies, this paper aims to facilitate cross-national discussion of the complex nature and changing demands of contemporary work-based learning, particularly highlighting the significance of its inclusive perspective and embedded approaches.

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This paper aims to consider the configurations, strategies and implications of facilitating teaching and learning through bringing together and crossing boundaries between education and work, and theory and practice (Akkerman, 2011), specifically focusing on the context of practically-based higher education (HE). In this paper we argue that boundary crossing is a continuous feature of practically-based HE - the process which, as we will further argue, is constructed and co-constructed through collaboration between different actors: tutors, learners and employers. Drawing on data from two HE case studies, the paper endeavours to demonstrate how institutional cooperation and collaboration between various actors create instances of crossing boundaries that enhance the teaching and learning process. The case studies include the National Software Academy (NSA) at Cardiff University, which delivers a BSc in Applied Software Engineering. Parallel approaches are drawn with our second case study the Edge Hotel School (EHS) at the University of Essex, a practically-based HE offering, enabling university students to obtain foundation or honours degrees in hospitality and events management. These case studies provide examples of innovative approaches and models in HE, aiming to facilitate action-based learning and offering a distinct form of continuous, hands-on exposure to real-life workplace practices.

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Cardiff National Software Academy (NSA) was established in 2015 jointly by the University of Cardiff and the Welsh Government. The NSA was set up to address the skills shortages in the local technology sector, where local employers had expressed concern about the lack of graduates who were prepared with the skills to contribute sufficiently to the sector. The NSA offers a three-year undergraduate (UG) degree (BSc) in Applied Software Engineering. It claims to offer an innovative approach to undergraduate education in order to better prepare students for the world of work when they graduate, and to even have students ready for employment before this point. It does this through continuous close links with employers, project-based learning approaches, hands-on experiences with industry, a commercial-like environment, and the targeted development of employability skills. Based on case study methodology, this research investigated the NSA as a model of higher education delivery to establish whether it could present an example for set up and delivery of higher education which supports the employability of students, and could be applied elsewhere across the sector.

Interviewees, significantly employers, held the NSA in high esteem in its ability to prepare students with the skills and knowhow needed for the labour market. Employers highlighted that both students and graduates they had worked with from the NSA were contributing significantly in their roles in the workplace, exhibiting both a faster pace and a higher quality in comparison to non-NSA graduates and student interns. A number of employers commented that those from the NSA joined the workplace and 'hit the ground running'. The report details several aspects of NSA's establishment and delivery which contributed to this graduate 'preparedness' for work.

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The higher education (HE) sector in England demonstrates a tendency of diversification of their provision, specifically through developing strategies to integrate academic and workplace learning. The paper aims to consider a case study of practically-based higher education in a higher education institution in England, as an example of an industry engaged model of higher education which combines academic and practical learning, through cross-disciplinary contextually relevant curricula. The paper reports on the research in progress hence findings at this stage are preliminary and speculative. This paper will specifically focus on the contextual analysis of the case study. The findings indicate that the cross-over between academic studies and practical experiences involves continuous stakeholder collaboration, aiming to foster a deep understanding of student skills and expertise such that they are able to meet unknown challenges in the context of a constantly changing world of work.

Published abstract.

The volume from which this paper is taken is available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 153.651. Show less