UKCES

The journey towards our goal of being a 'top eight' country for employment, skills and productivity, with increasing social cohesion, will be an exciting one as we continue to make positive changes to the prospects, opportunities and performance of the UK workforce.

Over the first two years of our existence, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills has sought to make a real contribution to policy and practice in the UK.

This paper summarises ten key issues for data relating to employment and skills in the UK, and explores in what ways these might be improved to support the continued improvement of the UK’s LMI landscape.

This paper is the first in a series for the ‘Customer Journey’ project, which is looking at the journey into work and progression, and presents findings and recommendations on one of five strands of the project, referrals. The transition from one agency to the another, for example from Jobcentre Plus to DWP contracted provision or to college provision, are a key part of the customer's journey as it has long been recognised that no one agency can provide an "end to end" service for every single client. However, referrals and transition points more generally are also a potential problem point for the customer journey.

The Employability Skills Project reviews the evidence of best practice principles for teaching and assessing employability skills. It examines definitions of employability skills and the success of approaches to teaching and assessment in a variety of settings, from early years, through to schools, higher education and welfare to work programmes.

This paper provides a review of recent research on the theme of employability skills exploring the evidence base and recent policy trends and initiatives. It outlines some of the key challenges and barriers in employability policy and suggests some areas for future work.