What is the significance of regulations of job contracts and wages when it comes to young people's access to labour market? This is an issue that has attracted and continues to attract a great deal of interest in both research and politics. Proposals for deregulated employment protection and reduced entry-level pay recur regularly in public…

A fundamental shift is taking place in the way we think about the future of work and its relationship to education, training and the labour market. Until recently, expanding higher education was widely believed to result in higher earnings, reflecting an insatiable demand for knowledge workers. In the United Kingdom, this race to higher education…

This report identifies effective strategies to tackle skills imbalances, based on five country-specific policy notes for France, Italy, Spain, South Africa and the United Kingdom. It provides a comparative assessment of practices and policies in the following areas: the collection and use of information on skill needs to foster a better alignment…

In an increasingly turbulent and uncertain global world, it is vital that as a society we work together to maximise opportunities and mitigate threats. This report examines some of these emerging threats and opportunities from a skills perspective, looks at the role those stakeholder groups play and how we should all come together to prepare our…

This research paper is one in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of how CVET is conceptualised in various international level policy documents and how it is referred to across countries. It discusses national conceptions of CVET, the…

The world is undergoing a major transformation that requires new skills and qualifications, new ways for people to know about skills and qualifications, and new ways to acquire skills and qualifications. This toolkit is about skills and qualifications, and the benefits they provide for people in a changing environment. It focuses specifically on…

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…

This article explores, through an analysis of key policy documents, the construction of the political concepts of social exclusion and inclusion through further education (FE). During the first decade of the New Labour government the concepts of social exclusion and inclusion have undergone a process of active construction. In between "The…

Until 1980, the process of occupational transition in the United Kingdom was characterized by orientation of training toward employment. In the 1980s, traditional training made it difficult to cope with technological changes. There may be a risk of increased tension between the social demand for training and the system that produces…

Despite evidence linking youth unemployment to labor market conditions rather than poor educational preparation, British policies have focused on education and training. Hard-core youth unemployment needs a wide range of policies concerned with the economic, social, and physical context. (SK)

These five papers underscore the fact that the labor market policies of Japan, West Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia are similar in many ways. The papers are "Japanese Labor Market Policies" (Koji Taira), "The Labor Market Policies of West Germany" (Deborah R. Cichon), "The Management of the U.K. Labour…

This article explores the previously quite marked absence from English policy debates on 14-19 education of issues that, in other developed countries, would be seen as key elements in the policy landscape. These are: the role of employers as providers of learning; the structure of employers' demand for skills, their recruitment and selection…

Ethnic minorities in Britain continue to be disadvantaged in the labor market through employment and training discrimination. Government-sponsored programs sometimes extend disadvantage through constant policy changes, contradictory policies, and inefficiency or prejudice in training and employing organizations. (SK)

This report examines data and data quality on vocational education and training available from the seven highly developed countries that make up the G-7: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Following an introduction, chapter 2 describes the nature of vocational education and training opportunities at…

A four-stage feminist research project investigating European Social Fund (ESF)-funded vocational training for unemployed women used the grounded theory approach. Stage 1 involved the formation of the research questions and design. Steps included the ontological, epistemological, and methodological positioning of the researcher. Stage 2 was the…