The aim of the report is to assess the contribution of the ESF to the objectives set out in the New Skills Agenda. The study addresses the following four questions: (1) How do ESF Operational Programmes tackle challenges and objectives identified by the New Skills Agenda, and to what extent is the ESF likely to contribute to achieving the main challenges/development needs in terms of skills development? (2) To what extent are Member States/Managing Authorities adapting ESF implementation to contribute to the New Skills Agenda? Are adjustments possible and made when needs change or new needs emerge? (3) What has been the actual contribution of the ESF to the New Skills Agenda to date in terms of achievements and implemented actions? (4) What are the main criticalities identified and what lessons can be drawn for the remainder of the programming period?

The report looks at the future of education and jobs and the challenges and opportunities presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It concluded that the skills mismatch observed in the labour market has its roots in primary school, and that giving all children, regardless of gender and social background, the same chance to meet professionals in a variety of fields is the key to widening their view of the world of work. This report, the product of a collaboration between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the UK-based charity, Education and Employers, offers a glimpse of how children see their future, and the forces that, if properly understood and harnessed, will drive them forward to realise their dreams. Through concerted actions by educators and business leaders, we can help our children develop the kinds of skills needed not only to weather, but to take advantage of this revolution. The future will be about pairing the artificial intelligence of computers with the cognitive, social and emotional capabilities of humans, so that we educate first-class humans, not second-class robots. It is our responsibility, as concerned adults, to acknowledge and understand the trends that are shaping this industrial revolution, and to impart that understanding to our children as early as possible. It is our responsibility, in other words, to help our children get ready for their future.

Work-integrated learning (WIL) programming has gained considerable momentum across the Ontario university sector, fueled by support from numerous stakeholders, including industry, government and students. WIL has been framed as a solution to the present 'skills mismatch' in the province, and as a way to smooth university graduates' transition into the labour market. There are numerous ongoing industry and government efforts to improve access to WIL programming across postsecondary education (PSE) in Ontario, given the many perceived benefits available through it. To date, however, little effort has been made by researchers to explore issues of diversity and inclusion within this space. Through this report, we aim to ameliorate this gap in existing academic and policy research on WIL.

This report from the Skills Commission calls on the UK government to give skills and lifelong learning renewed attention through devolution and a new Productivity Board. The report follows a 12-month inquiry, conducted over 2019 by Policy Connect and the Learning and Work Institute. The Commission found that employers are struggling to engage in an overly centralised skills system. Unlike other developed countries, England lacks channels to engage employers on a collective basis and has few local levers to adjust provision to meet local needs. Furthermore, a restricted and volatile funding system that promotes competition over collaboration is limiting the ability of colleges and training providers to respond effectively to local employers at a time when retraining and upskilling is becoming more important than ever. To address this the Commission recommends: (1) a framework for skills and lifelong learning with medium and long-term targets to be monitored by the Government's new Skills and Productivity board, which should be placed on a statutory footing and report to Parliament bi-annually like the Climate Change Commission; (2) further devolution of adult skills budgets, supported by stronger labour market and sectoral intelligence; (3) funding reform to incentives colleges and training providers to collaborate around meeting local learning and skills needs; (4) a national campaign to support the recruitment and retention of teaching staff in FE; and (5) pilots of personal learning accounts to support opportunities for retraining and upskilling as the population lives and works for longer.

This report focuses on how to better engage employers in apprenticeship and other work-based skills development programmes aligned with growing sectors of the local economy. A key part of this report was the implementation of an employer-based survey, which gathered information from over 300 Australian employers about their skills needs and barriers to apprenticeship participation. The report also provides information on four case studies, including Sydney Metro and STEMship in New South Wales, Collective Education in Tasmania, and the Dream, Believe, Achieve programme in Queensland. The case studies demonstrate how local organisations are building stronger business-education partnerships.

This study is the first volume of Cedefop research on empowering adults through upskilling and reskilling pathways. It estimates the magnitude of the low-skilled adult population according to a broader conceptualisation which goes beyond educational attainment levels, and considers digital skills, literacy and numeracy, as well as skill loss and skill obsolescence. The study also identifies different subgroups of adults most at risk of being low-skilled, by skill dimension. Better understanding the magnitude of the low-skilled adult population and recognising different and specific target groups within the heterogeneous group of adults with potential for upskilling and reskilling, is crucial to better design and implementation of effective upskilling pathways for those most in need.

The CBI is the UK's leading business organisation, speaking for some 190,000 businesses, including over 70 universities and over 30 Colleges, that together employ around a third of the UK's private sector workforce. We represent businesses of all sizes from all sectors from across the UK. This report explores training, learning, and personal development practices of UK employers, particularly in relation to recent technological and labour market changes. Evidence was gathered through a series of interviews, policy discussions, and events with CBI members and broader stakeholders. The content is a snapshot of business practice, based on sentiment and trends during discussions, rather than a comprehensive picture of all employer upskilling and retraining.

A thriving knowledge economy inherently relies on a highly skilled and adaptable workforce. And, as the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic has revealed, knowledge-intensive sectors are far more resilient in times of disruption than most other sectors. So what does it take to build the workforce that will help Canada transition to a knowledge economy? Despite a strong post-secondary system combined with robust labour market development programs, industry points to a lack of the right talent as a critical inhibitor for their growth. The enduring and frustrating irony to this challenge is that while Canadian [information and communications technology] ICT firms are struggling to hire business talent, significant numbers of workers in the Canadian labour market have the foundational skills to succeed in these roles. This paper sets out to explore this gap, beginning to answer these critical questions: How do we ensure that opportunities are maximized for Canadians in the transformation to a knowledge-intensive economy? What are the appropriate support mechanisms for mid- to late-career workers who are most in danger of being displaced during this transformation? How should Canada's skilling and education systems evolve to prepare those entering the workforce in an environment where skills needs are constantly evolving? Most importantly, it asks the fundamental question: Is the problem really mismatched skills? To answer this, the authors go back to first principles and ask: What does it take to land a job in tech, especially if you have the skills but are coming out of a totally different sector?; To explore these and other questions the authors created Palette Inc., a national not-for-profit talent platform that strives to meet the needs of Canada's most innovative companies by rapidly upskilling diverse and non-traditional workers. Palette provided a platform for testing real-world assumptions and gaining new perspectives, in part by seeing the skills debate through the eyes of companies and workers. Overall findings indicate that the talent challenge faced by ICT firms is less a problem of an underlying skills gap in the workforce and more a problem of skill underutilization. It is argued that ICT firms' inherent biases are stalling the transition of large numbers of well-qualified workers into these firms. Such biases arise because the hiring processes ICT firms use are not capable of identifying skills picked up in more traditional sectors. This contributes to a chronic inefficiency and underutilization of talent within the labour market and bolsters the refrain that there is a skills gap and/or talent shortage. The challenge for policy-makers in thinking about how we support the burgeoning knowledge economy is to identify where the requisite skill set already is and how firms can tap those workers.

The UK Employer Skills Survey (ESS) is one of the largest business surveys in the world, with the data in this report based on survey responses from over 87,000 employers. This research provides a comprehensive source of intelligence on the skills challenges that UK employers face both within their existing workforces and when recruiting, the levels and nature of investment in training and development, and the relationship between skills challenges, training activity and business strategy. The 2017 survey is the fourth in a series conducted biennially since 2011 (with nation-specific skills surveys pre-dating this). The ESS series therefore provides rich labour market intelligence from the period when the UK economy was emerging from the recession of the late 2000s, to more recent years when the UK has experienced relatively sustained economic growth and high levels of job creation. The latest survey was carried out between May and October 2017. Employers with at least two people on the payroll were in scope, and interviews were conducted at an establishment level with the most senior person at the site with responsibility for human resources and workplace skills., Key finding include: Recruitment activity has continued to grow since 2015; There has been an 8 per cent increase in the number of skill-shortage vacancies compared with 2015; By occupation, employers were most likely to have experienced skills-related difficulties when recruiting for Skilled Trades positions (such as chefs, electricians, and vehicle technicians); The majority of hard-to-fill vacancies (67 per cent) are caused, at least in part, by a lack of skills, qualifications and experience among applicants; Overall there were around 110,000 vacancies that employers were finding hard-to-fill exclusively for reasons unrelated to applicants' skill levels (11 per cent of all vacancies); By sector the proportion of vacancies proving hard to fill exclusively for non-skills-related reasons was highest in Health and Social Work (19 per cent, up from 13 per cent in 2015); Among employers who had vacancies that were proving hard to fill, one in three (34 per cent) had attempted to recruit EU nationals to try to help overcome recruitment difficulties; Alongside skill shortages that may be experienced when recruiting, employers may also experience skills gaps in their existing workforce; At an occupational level, skills gaps continued to be more prevalent in what might be described as 'labour intensive' roles (i.e. Elementary occupations and Machine Operatives) and 'service intensive' occupations (i.e. Caring, Leisure and Other Services staff and Sales and Customer Service staff); Transient factors, such as staff being new to the role or training only being partially complete, were a contributing cause of most skills gaps (76 per cent); As was the case in 2015, the most common skill lacking among staff was time-management and prioritisation of tasks, contributing to nearly three-fifths of all skills gaps (59 per cent); In line with the two previous ESS surveys in 2013 and 2015, two-thirds of employers in the UK (66 per cent) had provided training for their staff over the past 12 months, with either off-the-job training or on-the-job training provided by around half of all employers in each case (48 per cent and 53 per cent respectively).