This publication highlights the critical role UK universities will continue to play in reviving and sustaining economic growth across the country. Using a range of visual data and statistics, it highlights that the UK's future success depends on developing innovation and the knowledge economy in what is an increasingly competitive global…

Drawing upon interviews with key stakeholders including policy makers and providers of the flagship welfare reform programme--the New Deal for Young People, this article contributes to analysis and debate through an exploration of skills investment policy and practice in this key UK "welfare to work" programme. It concludes that the…

Purpose: Disparities in learning opportunities endure. This paper aims to investigate whether the learning representative schemes in the UK and New Zealand (NZ) may redress disparate opportunities for learning. Design/methodology/approach: An interview study of UK trade unions' educational officers and an interview study of representatives of…

Over recent years, approaches to education and training have become more informal, situated, outcome focused and experiential. Within this context, formal learning now plays a greatly diminished role, being supplanted by activity-based and technologically-based learning. This article, structured in the form of a polemic challenges readers to…

This article features the University Forum for Human Resource Development (UFHRD), a voluntary network or an informal association stemming from two separate initiatives in the UK in the late 1980s. The first of these was at national government level and was the introduction of national competence based vocational qualifications (NVQs) following…

A levy/grant system exists in the UK construction industry to provide financial support for companies undertaking training activities. With the current UK government skills policy, there is an emphasis on ensuring that training support provided to employers is aimed at enhancing companies' profitability. This paper explores the profitability of…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the introduction of a new experience-based learning process in the learning and teaching of human resource development (HRD) within a professionally accredited curriculum in a UK University. Design/methodology/approach: An action enquiry approach is taken, and qualitative data gathered over a full academic year…

Creating a fertile space for debate and ideas in order to drive innovation in learning and skills is integral to LSN's (Learning and Skills Network's) mission. To achieve this LSN has pioneered a new approach to making learning work from classroom to boardroom--and created the Centre for Innovation in Learning. This new, independent think tank…

All workplaces are sites in which people learn. To state such a fact still seems fairly revolutionary given that many employers and policymakers tend to restrict the meaning of job-related learning to formal episodes of "training" that can be counted and costed. This view is rooted in a wider perception prevalent in society in general…

The Reading Agency has been backing and building a movement in libraries called reader development. The movement is creating a livelier, more interventionist reading service that's both much more attractive and socially relevant. A focus on reader development is changing the way public libraries work, and transforming people's lives in the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical, reflective examination of the organisation, delivery and evaluation of a training event conducted by postgraduate students undertaking a module on human resource development. Design/methodology/approach: The paper seeks to offer a triangulation of semi-structured interviews, archival…

The paper questions the link that policy-makers assume exists between qualifications and access to employment in the creative and cultural (C&C) sector. It identifies how labour market conditions in the C&C sector undermine this assumption and how the UK's policy formation process inhibits education and training (E&T) actors from…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to review the use of competence frameworks in the UK healthcare sector and to explore characteristics of the sector that may influence the success of projects to develop new frameworks. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on project reports and evaluations of practice in a range of recent projects…

The publication of "Learning Through Life," the main report of the Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning, has been welcomed across the trade union movement. It offers a useful and useable framework for discussing the learning needs of people through the different stages of life and makes compelling suggestions about how to adjust…

This article reports on research exploring the extent to which a group of Malaysian students in a British university expect to secure a competitive edge in the positional race for jobs, income and status. It explores the students' understandings of a good job and success, as well as their perceived chances of fulfilling their aspirations.…