Good people skills — they’re what graduate recruiters really, really want

Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning John Hayes announced two consultations yesterday.

Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning John Hayes announced two consultations yesterday. Skills for Sustainable Growth outlines BIS’s vision for skills and explores some key areas where we would like to seek further views and A Simplified Further Education and Skills Funding System and Methodology which seeks views on simplifying the funding system.

Employers, individuals, colleges, training organisations and representative organisations are asked to share their ideas on how they would like skills policy to be set out in the future.

Consultation opened on 22 July 2010 and responses will be received until 14 October 2010.

Youth unemployment is costing the economy £10m a day in lost productivity, so the need to give students work and employability skills training is greater than ever.

The Guardian reported this month that an ‘aspect of the worrying trend in youth unemployment is that there are thousands of young people who don’t have the skills, confidence or qualifications to find their first job.  They may have struggled at school or grown up thinking no one cared, and they are being driven further from the job market, as they struggle to compete with a backlog of graduates.’

So it’s clear that we need to tackle this entrenched youth unemployment now and that educators and employers must work together to give these disadvantaged young people the long-term support they need to escape unemployment for good.  1 million youth unemployed makes for a frightening headline.

One way colleges are responding is to offer the Work and Employability Skills qualifications this coming academic year to give their students an edge in the job market.

At Working Knowledge we partner with FE colleges nationally to deliver work, employability, enterprise and life skills on your behalf.  We do all the planning delivery and portfolio collection for you.

We deliver the qualifications by running events that are exciting, challenging and fun.  The events involve local and regional employers that we recruit on your behalf and who, in many cases, go on to offer students work placements, guest lectures and apprenticeships.

Students not only feel more confident about their career goals after our events, thanks to a large extent to the engagement with local business people, but also feel more motivated to complete their core programme.

Our partner colleges fund our programmes that last from 1-3 days either through the qualifications that we deliver on your behalf (including all portfolio collection) or through project funds such as Aimhigher.

Take a look below at what local employers and students thought about recent Working Knowledge events held in Bristol;

If this is of interest to you, then please email  james.lott@twkg.net for more information.

Business Secretary Vince Cable sets out new priorities including Apprenticeships, NEETs and Adult Learning

John Hayes, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, announces new freedoms for colleges

Launch of the European Skills for Employability Awards

Launch of the European Skills for Employability Awards by the European Alliance on Skills for Employability

Have you created or implemented an initiative that has used ICT training or digital technology skills development to raise employment prospects and improve digital and social inclusion? If so, you should enter the European Skills for Employability Awards, a development of the Skills for Employability Laboratory facilitated by CSR Europe and Econet. Read more here

Call for universities to publish “employability statements”, to help students to become job-ready.

David Willetts, the new minister of state for universities and science, has called for universities to publish “employability statements”, to help students to become job-ready in the widest sense. The aim is to have the statements in place by the end of August, to enable university applicants for the academic year 2011/12 to make better-informed choices.  Read more here…

Flux Student Profile – Loretta Omari-Asor – Nottingham Trent University

Loretta Omari-Asor was at Flux 2010 as a member of the Nottingham Trent University team.  Studying for a degree in Business Marketing Loretta believes that following her experience at this year’s FLUX Business Challenge she has secured her desired role as Marketing Executive with the UK’s leading global information services organisation.  Read more about Loretta here – Loretta’s profile

Making Sense of Business – A new and fairly unconventional approach to business understanding

Making Sense of Business, a recently published book by Alison Branagan takes a refreshing approach to developing enterprising business skills for both would be entrepreneurs as well as managers.

Read more here -  Making Sense of Business

Bristol University launches employability focused volunteering award

Organised volunteering and work experience has long been a vital companion to university degree courses. Usually it is left to employers to deduce the potential from a list of extracurricular adventures on a graduate’s CV, but now the University of Bristol has launched an award to formalise the achievements of students who devote time to activities outside their courses. Bristol PLuS aims to boost students in an increasingly competitive jobs market by helping them acquire work and life skills alongside academic qualifications.  here