Education and Employers
Research Digest - July 2021

Notices

All papers, presentations and videos from our 6th International Conference on Employer Engagement are now accessible here.

Hosted by Education and Employers in partnership with the Edge Foundation this year’s theme was ‘Preparing Young People for the Future. Going virtual meant we were able to welcome many more delegates and speakers from all over the world. A grand total of 99 speakers presented on topics from vocational education and training to the impact of Covid-19, meeting role models at primary to international comparisons and much more.

Publications

The state of school education: one year into the COVID pandemic   

OECD

The OECD – in collaboration with UNESCO, UNICEF and The World Bank – has been monitoring the massive disruption to learning caused by the pandemic across countries and collecting data on how each system is responding to the crisis, from school closures and remote learning to teacher vaccination and gradual returns to in-class instruction. This report presents the preliminary findings from this survey. The report recommends that the many good experiences learned during the pandemic will not be lost when things return to ‘normal’ but provide inspiration for the further development of education. That is also about finding better ways to recognise, reward and celebrate success, to do whatever is possible to make it easier for innovators to take risks and encourage the emergence of new ideas. 

Investing in career guidance  

WGCG 

This report looks into career guidance as an essential player in the post-pandemic recovery plans and in helping people of all ages and backgrounds to navigate such disruption. Evidence reviews give policymakers confidence that investment in guidance can be expected to provide positive economic, educational and social returns to both individuals and society. International data shows, however, that in too many countries access to guidance is insufficient, particularly for those who are in greatest need.

Personal guidance fund evaluation final report    

Jill Hanson, Siobhan Neary & Hannah Blake

​The report presents findings from the evaluation of the personal guidance Fund developed by the Careers & Enterprise Company to support the development of innovative, cost-effective models for delivering personal careers guidance in schools and colleges. The report identifies effective approaches to improve practice beyond the fund by considering 1. The effectiveness of different approaches. 2. Working with different beneficiary groups. 3. The impact of personal guidance on students. 4. The impact of training on staff and school/college career guidance. 5. Key learning regarding scaling up, sustainability and best practice.

Implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for vocational education and training 

OECD

The report discusses how the widespread school closures affected over one billion students during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vocational education and training (VET) sector faced particular challenges during the crisis, most notably the fact that the digital learning environments that most education institutions had to rely on during closures don’t work as well for practice-oriented learning – a core component of VET instruction – as they do for academic learning. This report looks at comparative statistics and policy information collected by the OECD across a number of education systems to track the impact of the pandemic on the VET sector.

Career Ready? UK youth during the Covid-19 crisis

Ingrid Schoon & Golo Henseke

The heightened concern for the employment prospects of young people in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic motivated this report. It discusses new and timely evidence on the career readiness of young people in times of crisis and how this connects with their hopes and expectations for the future. The findings of the research suggest that, even if the employment and social environment were to return fully to ‘normal’ within six months, the effects of the pandemic may be cumulative and long-lasting.

What’s next? lessons on education recovery: findings from a survey of ministries of education amid the COVID-19 pandemic 

UNESCO   

As part of the coordinated global education response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank conducted a Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures. This report presents key findings from the 3rd round of the UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank-OECD survey, although in some cases, data from the previous two rounds and some other sources were also used. The report concludes that compared to earlier reports, countries have taken more measures to prepare for safe school reopening, including health and hygiene interventions, monitoring of student attendance, and remedial programmes. However, low-income countries cannot afford even the most basic measures related to water and hygiene. Moreover, globally, countries were less likely to apply measures that require coordination across levels of government or with other sectors. 

The impact of winning college awards: a review of winners of the Edge-sponsored AoC Beacon Award for excellence in real world learning 

Dana Dabbous & Jane Samuels 

The focus of the research in this report was to explore how the Beacon Award for Excellence in Real-World Learning, which the Edge Foundation has sponsored since 2005/6, has made a difference to the colleges that won the Award. The report illuminates specific examples of how Edge Beacon Award-winning colleges have taken forward their work. It may also have several wider implications. These include supporting innovative practice, showcasing this externally, and setting out lessons learnt that could help future Award winners make the most of the opportunity to embed and sustain good practices. The key findings reported are that the Awards; raised the profile of the college across the FE sector and their local community, developed a sense of pride in the achievements of college staff and students, improved staff motivation and attracted greater industry and employer links.

The benefits of Gatsby Benchmark achievement for post-16 destinations 

Chris Percy & Emily Tanner

This report presents quantitative analysis relating the level of Gatsby Benchmark achievement reported by English schools in 2017/18 to the education, employment, or training destinations sustained by their Year 11 leavers during 2018/19. It explores the relationship for schools across England as well as those with more disadvantaged students. The report considers the policy and financial implications of investing in good career guidance for all students. One primary result is that Among the most disadvantaged quarter of schools, the relationship is particularly strong: Each additional benchmark reflects 2.8% improvement, amounting to a 20.1% decline in the non-EET rate for full Gatsby Benchmark achievement.

Careers leadership in colleges: supporting learners through a ‘whole college’ approach 

Sarah Gibson, Emily Tanner & Andrew Webster 

The report presents findings from an online survey of Careers Leaders with strategic responsibility for their college’s careers programme and 27 in-depth qualitative video or telephone interviews to understand how careers leadership is being delivered in practice, what approaches are working and how Career Hubs and Enterprise Advisers could further support the delivery of the Gatsby Benchmarks. The key findings identified in the research are that careers Leaders at the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) level, careers Leaders at the management level, reporting to a staff member on the SLT and careers Leaders at the operational level, part of the careers education team, reporting to a manager who then reported to a member of staff on the SLT.

The impact of employer engagement with schools 

Glasgow Developing the Young Workforce

The report presents a review of the research on the impact of employer engagement with schools and pupils. The intention is to use the research to encourage more engagement and to focus action on those groups and activities where there is particular evidence of strong impact. It synthesises different research reports of the Education and Employer’s Taskforce and other published and grey literature on employer engagement and education. Throughout the report, an emphasis was put on translating already published research findings into easily understandable graphs and tables and presenting the research findings in an accessible language. In total, the findings of 62 studies are included in this report.

Scaling up: developing and extending career-related learning in primary schools  

Education and Employers Charity

This report looks at the impact of Primary Futures and explores how the programme can be scaled up. Primary Futures connects primary schools with volunteers from a wide range of diverse backgrounds, with different career journeys and doing different jobs. The evidence shows gains in attitude to school and learning, which can support engagement and attainment and positively impacts ambition, confidence, and ideas about future careers. The next steps in demonstrating impact require operational support and funding to drive comparison group trials.

Technical and vocational education and training for disadvantaged youth 

Joyceline Alla-Mensah, Holly Henderson & Simon McGrath 

This report presents findings on a study guided by two main aims. First to understand barriers to the participation of disadvantaged youth in TVET and second to examine the available evidence on strategies and approaches that are being used or can be used to meet the needs of disadvantaged youth. A utility of this report's approach for thinking about TVET and its disadvantage is that it reminds us that we are talking about a trajectory for (potential) TVET learners, not a single moment.

The future is skills. It is time for us to rethink, reimagine and rebuild the labour market upon them 

City & Guilds Group 

This report aims to share vital insights into the skills that are most in-demand and those that are emerging. Better matching of people and skills with employment has arguably never been more important, as businesses and the economy continue to recover and business leaders start to consider how to grow and increase productivity. One clear evidence from the research is that businesses and workers alike will need to constantly reinvent themselves in the decades ahead to stay relevant in a constantly evolving workplace.

Comments

Redrawing the balance in South Africa 

We launched our 2 minutes Redraw the Balance video in 2016 to show the ingrained gender stereotypical views children often have and the importance of tackling these at primary school. The video has been remade in Denmark, China and Canada and South Africa is the latest to recreate the concept. This new version was produced by VVOB South Africa, a Belgian non-profit operating in South Africa’s education sector, as a resource for their Gender Responsive Pedagogy for Early Childhood Education project. The project seeks to support early childhood educators to challenge stereotypes in their teaching practice, creating learning environments that are sensitive to issues of gender equality and allow all children to fulfil their potential. 

Lack of work experience takes its toll on student employability 

Institute of student employers ​​​

Mission: recovering education 2021  

Stefania Giannini, Robert Jenkins & Jaime Saavedra 

Rwanda: making strides in equity and inclusion  

GPE  

Primary schooling for children with disabilities: a review of African scholarship  

Singal, Nidhi, Carrie Spencer & Rafael Mitchell  

Social mobility vs equity: what can Ofsted learn from other UK school inspectorates?  

Dana Dabbous 

Disadvantaged pupils benefit most from meeting relatable work role models 

Nick Chambers 

Large learning gains in pockets of extreme poverty: experimental evidence from Guinea Bissau 

Alex Eble 

Investing in career guidance: helping youth out of the COVID pandemic 

 Anthony Mann & Glenda Quintini 

Does vocational education pay better, or worse, than academic education? 

Jie Chen & Francesco Pastore 

Career development learning in childhood: a collaborative guidance approach in Spanish low-income contexts 

Soledad Romero-Rodríguez, Celia Moreno-Morilla & Eduardo García-Jiménez 

A capability approach to understanding the role of informal apprenticeship in the human development of informal apprentices 

Joyceline Alla-Mensah & Simon McGrath 

Events