White Paper

Among the millions of asylum seekers who recently arrived in OECD countries, the majority are young people who may be able to take advantage of vocational education and training (VET) opportunities to help them enter skilled employment. This report provides advice to governments and other stakeholders who are seeking to use VET to promote integration, in particular for young humanitarian migrants. While the study draws particularly on policy and practice observed in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland, it also highlights other international practices. The report focuses on the main channels through which migrants succeed in VET. It is essential that migrants are fully informed about the opportunities VET provision offers and that they have access to high quality preparatory programmes enabling access to upper-secondary VET. Once in such provision, targeted support should help them to complete VET programmes successfully. OECD countries are putting in place innovative measures to achieve better outcomes for both migrants and for economies as a whole. Ultimately this report argues that VET systems can become stronger, more flexible and more inclusive, when working better for all students, including those with diverse and vulnerable backgrounds.

The Future of Work Taskforce, established in the Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business identified that moving towards a skills-based approach to labour market analysis could help Australia respond to this changing demand for skills. On a practical level, we identified the need to answer questions including: – How can job seekers and workers make a quicker and smoother job transition as tasks and skills requirements change? – How can employers improve their workforce planning to get the required skills? – Can educational institutions monitor the skills market so course offerings can be adjusted quickly if required? – How can policy makers guide people from declining sectors into areas of growing employment demand, and target welfare interventions to support job seekers better? To answer these questions, we are exploring how analysis of large datasets using machine learning and other techniques can offer insights to improve labour market transitions. This has involved adapting for Australia the approach in the January 2018 report, Towards a Reskilling Revolution: A Future of Jobs for All, issued by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and collaborating with Boston Consulting Group and Burning Glass Technologies. This report summarises our work to-date developing the first Australian model to map transferability between occupations in the changing labour market of the future.

This report offers some recommended immediate next steps, making micro-credentials work—or work better—to build trust by adopting clear definitions, and standards-based practices; add value, proving their benefits to learners and employers, particularly their employability value; and achieve sustainability, for those new modes yet to show return on investment for providers.

Internships and other experiential work opportunities are fundamental to the workforce at large and to individual professional development. These temporary work arrangements provide students a structured opportunity to gain relevant workplace skills, clarify their interests, and gain valuable human capital as they signal to employers that they are ready for the world of work. Internships are likewise valuable to employers, both in terms of cultivating their future workforce as well as gaining assistance with temporary projects or entry-level work at low cost and low risk. As internship offerings continue to grow, it is essential to understand these benefits and to explore areas for expansion and support of these types of work training opportunities for those seeking experience in a given career field. This report explores these and other benefits of internships through a joint consideration of the college student perspective, the Generation Z parent perspective, and the employer perspective. Questions addressed within this report include: College students: How many college students intern? What are some of the differences in approaches to post-college planning between those with and without internship experience? What are some of the concerns related to access to internship opportunities? Employers: What types of organizations offer internship opportunities? What are the most common barriers to offering internships? To what extent do employers value internships in hiring considerations? Parents: How do parents feel about their students pursuing internship opportunities as a part of their pre-career training? Are parents aware of different types of experiential work opportunities available to their middle school- and high school-aged children?

In this fourth and final report, Power in Numbers presents insights from its three foundational reports, accompanied by case studies that illustrate how organizations have implemented best practices in the real world. The case studies — featuring diverse adult education stakeholders, approaches, and lessons learned — demonstrate that there is not a single prescriptive path to supporting successful adult learning. Through these case studies you will learn: How a state-wide OER initiative has saved an estimated $55 million in textbook costs for its university students. How an investment fund has supported the scaling of seven adult workforce technology companies. How professors at a community college piloted an innovative distance learning model that has improved minority students’ course performance.

This report sets out what is distinctive about data science as a discipline and offers some key statistics from our commissioned research to show the level of growth in demand for a range of data skills. We explore the different drivers and blockers around data science roles in different sectors, and highlight examples from a body of case studies of data science careers and career mobility across sectors (the complete portfolio of case studies is available as a separate publication). Engagement with data scientists, analysts and other data users informed us about some opportunities to foster talent and to enable movement between sectors. The interdisciplinary nature of data science lends itself to joint appointments, and its applied nature fits with apprenticeship mechanisms. The following sections set out recommendations and activities across four major areas for action, with recommendations targeted across government, funders, universities, industry and the public sector to make progress towards a thriving data science landscape. They also contain a range of mechanisms for developing and sharing skills across sectors, highlighting examples of models that could potentially be replicated, scaled up and expanded. Accompanying this report is a detailed set of case studies featuring career stories of data scientists working in a wide range of roles, levels and sectors, including Accenture, the Alan Turing Institute, Channel 4, Cambridge University, DeepZen, GCHQ, Government Digital Service, HSBC, The One Campaign, the Office for National Statistics, UCL’s Institute of Neurology and the University of Warwick. (See Dynamics of data science: what data scientists say about data science.) There is a clear need for collaborative, sustainable mechanisms to develop talent and this report promotes a vision for the sharing of data science talent across all sectors. We have identified a range of models and mechanisms to enable this vision, such as outreach programmes, enrichment and fellowship schemes, capability-building programmes, informal/ peer-to-peer mechanisms, collaborative events and partnerships, data stores and data centres/institutes. All of which will be explored in more detail in the following chapters. The models can also be found in an accompanying document. (See Dynamics of data science: models and mechanisms) Examples of good practice have been collected with the input of members of the data science community from across academia, industry and the public sector. They feature a variety of tried and tested ideas from across the UK, which require minimal to major resource support and can be led by individuals as well as institutions. The aim of the models is to inspire scale-up and cohesion. The models and mechanisms can be used by people who are: concerned about the recruitment of data scientists, data analysts and domain experts; involved in developing data science talent at all levels; considering (re)training as data scientists, data analysts and domain experts; making decisions around skills funding on a local, regional and national scale; or seeking to ensure that data they hold is used for societal benefit.

This report is about combining the best evidence, practices, and policies to drive a broader systems reform agenda for what works for adult learners, and trying to improve the persistently low rates at which adults transition into postsecondary credentials and better jobs. It’s about finding scalable solutions to help the millions of adult learners who need pathways to economic opportunity.

In recent years, the field of postsecondary education has been increasingly focused on providing students opportunities to gain work experience. Federal, state, and local governments have been working to create avenues for students to participate in internships and apprenticeships as they build their academic and workforce skills in college or other training programs. Similarly, many postsecondary education institutions have begun investing in services that help students obtain internships or other work-based learning opportunities while enrolled in college. Recent surveys of employers highlight the importance of these ventures, as many employers argue that they have difficulty finding college graduates who can demonstrate important workplace skills, such as data analysis and complex problem solving. Despite this increased national attention on work-based learning opportunities, internship programs vary markedly from college to college, and very few mechanisms exist for evaluating the quality of the experiences they offer students. For instance, while researchers have noted the importance of providing wages to interns, the majority of internships are unpaid, making it difficult for lower-income students to participate in these opportunities. Moreover, differing expectations between student interns and employers can lead to challenges in these relationships. Finally, some internships provide limited exposure to meaningful work as companies have interns perform simple tasks that are unrelated to students’ intended careers. Hoping to overcome these challenges, Ascendium Education Group (formerly Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation and Affiliates) established the Career Readiness Internship (CRI) program in 2015. The CRI program provided funding and support to 33 colleges in four states for the development of quality paid internships for low-income students. This report presents findings from an analysis of the implementation of the CRI program at these colleges as well as student and employer perspectives of the program. Overall, the study found that colleges were successful at recruiting large numbers of low-income and traditionally underserved students into the program and providing them valuable career-focused internship experiences. Additionally, employers tended to have high regard for the program and their collaborations with the colleges. Nevertheless, colleges had difficulties maintaining and expanding the CRI program at the conclusion of the grant period, suggesting that more needs to be done to help colleges institutionalize the progr

This report outlines why employment-focused social enterprises offer an alternative people-centred approach to mainstream employment solutions. Far more than just being a different way to do business, employment-focused social enterprises can build capacity and create positive impacts for the people they aim to help, as well as society as a whole. In this light, our research shows the potential employment-focused social enterprises can unleash in creating positive social change, and we look at ways their reach, success and impact can be scaled.