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Educators
Education providers are key to developing a culture that values skills and business knowledge, as well as academic learning. They are gatekeepers to ensuring students have opportunities from early on in their education to develop the capabilities needed to meet changing work requirements.
Projects CET has supported have enabled schools, colleges and universities to develop the personal and professional skills in young people that employers say they want. They have also enabled teachers to build and maintain relationships with local business partners and former students who can bring the world of work into the classroom and offer direct experience of the workplace and of enterprise.
The 2018 CET publication ‘Lost in Transition‘ highlights the practical steps educators can make to help young adults make a successful transition from education to work. It suggests that we need a long-term and co-ordinated approach involving a range of stakeholders to address the skills challenge of today and tomorrow.
Examples of Recent Projects and Useful Resources provide information relevant to educators.
Commercial Education Trust
Pathways to Success
These are tough times for anyone entering the labour market, starting a business or
trying to progress in their chosen career. Young people, in particular, have been
badly affected by political, economic and technological turmoil, with already high levels
of youth unemployment expected to rise still further. In these challenging conditions it
is clear that workplace success will go to those who can demonstrate not only technical
know-how and transferrable “soft” skills, but also a basic understanding of how
business works. How, then, can all these very different qualities be nurtured? The stories
of the business owners and social entrepreneurs featured on these pages point to some
possible answers.
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Education and Employers Charity
Motivated to Achieve
Employer involvement in careers education yields a big return on investment, with a new study by the Education and Employers charity, supported by CET, suggesting that even short interventions can make a real difference.
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This study used a randomised control trial to investigate whether attending just three career talks by employee volunteers had an impact on students’ GCSE results, the hours they planned to spend revising for these exams, their attitudes towards learning, and confidence in their career prospects. Around 650 Year 11 students from five schools took part in the trial and were split into an intervention group that attended three 20 to 30-minute careers talks and a control group that did not attend any.
The results indicate small but consistent improvements in the attitudes of the intervention group, and a ‘positive and statistically significant’ relationship between revision hours and career talks. The results also reveal an indicative, direct link between career talks and the intervention group outperforming their predicted GCSE results relative to the control group.
Education Endowment Foundation
Using Digital Technology to Improve Learning - Guidance Report
This report looks at how technology can be most effectively integrated in the classroom and provides guidance to senior leaders and teachers so that they can make better informed decisions about its use. It concludes is that technology must be used in a way that is informed by effective pedagogy and that good implementation is crucial to success.
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As technology transforms how we do things, so too are the opportunities for the use of technology in education becoming more apparent. This report looks at how technology can be most effectively integrated in the classroom and provides guidance to senior leaders and teachers so that they can make better informed decisions about its use. It concludes is that technology must be used in a way that is informed by effective pedagogy and that good implementation is crucial to success.
In addition to an overarching framework for considering how technology is best used, the report is structured around some of the key elements of effective teaching: explanations and modelling; pupil practice; assessment and feedback.
Commercial Education Trust
Future-Proofing the Next Generation
Today's school leavers and graduates face a future certain to bring uncertainty. Many will be doing jobs that do not yet exist, using technologies and skills yet to be invented. CET recently commissioned a study of what types of learning experiences are currently available to help young people both understand the world of commerce, and to develop the skills and attitudes needed for a successful working life.
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A research team led by Professor (Emeritus) Prue Huddleston of the University of Warwick’s Centre for Education Studies carried out the study, which included a literature review, followed by observations and interviews at five case study organisations and focus group work.
The study concludes that while it is vital to prepare students to move into the world beyond education, how this is done is just as important as to whether it is done at all; that to be effective, such education needs to be integral to the curriculum, not a ‘nice to have’ add-on; that financial constraints are holding back educators from doing more to develop the know-how, attitudes which young people need to succeed in work and other parts of their lives; that even with limited resources, schools would be more likely to prioritise commercial education if it became part of a statutory personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) curriculum; and that methods used to assess traditional learning are not always appropriate for programmes designed to develop enterprise and employability.
Commercial Education Trust
Lost in Transition
Lost in Transition explores the challenges of preparing young people for work. It concludes that developing skills in young people is one thing but being able to apply and utilise these skills is another. It argues that we have known for some time what skills are.....
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needed for the workplace but that delivery is patchy and a co-ordinated approach is now needed to help young adults make a successful transition from education to work.
Based on case studies which show how design, content, context and teaching methods can be part of a shift from ‘more’ to ‘better’. With recommendations for employers, educators and policy-makers. Lost in Transition is a summary of research conducted in 2017 by Trisha Fettes entitled ‘Putting Skills to Work’.
Future Frontiers
External Evaluation of Future Frontiers Career Coaching Programme
Only an estimated 10% of schools provide adequate careers advice to their students, most of it online, leaving few opportunities for face-to-face guidance that is highly recommended for supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
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Future Frontiers works primarily in London but also in areas of high deprivation on the South Coast of England, delivering one-to-one careers coaching alongside a range of meaningful employer interactions that are aligned to the aspirations of young people. It currently works in 15 schools, supporting over 1,300 pupils, with over 470 university students and business professionals as career coaches.
CET grant support is for an external evaluation of the Future Frontiers coaching programme in two parts, to be undertaken by two research universities. The evaluation will test the programme’s effectiveness as well as track pupil destinations.
ARK – Absolute Return for Kids
Evaluation of the Professional Pathways Programme
Professional Pathways is an enhanced programme of study targeted at students aged 16-18 with the aim of preparing them for the professional world. It equips students with in-depth knowledge of a growth employment sector, builds their employability skills and business networks, provides tailored network opportunities with corporate partners, and provides career advice for students not following an academic post-school route.
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ARK currently runs 35 schools educating more than 21,000 pupils: all of the schools are non-selective and in areas with high levels of economic disadvantage or educational need.
The evaluation will look at the long-term impact of the Professional Pathways programme on student destinations and has the potential to create greater parity of esteem between vocational and academic pathways.
Institute of Education, University College London
Evaluation of Career Colleges
CET funding supported an evaluation of Career Colleges by UCL/The Institute of Education which was completed in February 2020. Career Colleges, supported by the Career Colleges Trust, offer a choice in vocational education opportunities for 14-19-year-old young people. The research investigated their genesis, curriculum, stakeholder perception, employer engagement as well as a monitoring tool to drive improvement.
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The research also enabled the identification of wider policy implications in relation to 14-19 education, early specialisation in a vocational field and other issues relating to further education, employer engagement, commercial education, skills development and social mobility. The research was co-funded with the Edge Foundation.
CET summarised key findings in its publication ‘Lessons From Employer Led Learning’. The full evaluation was published by The Edge Foundation (February 2020).
Trisha Fettes – academic researcher
Putting Skills To Work
There has been a long history of identifying skills needed to perform well in the labour market, but employers have been persistent in voicing concern that those leaving education are not ‘ready’ for work. ‘Putting Skills To Work’ is a study by academic researcher Trisha Fettes which explores practical examples of programmes which incorporate commercial education and how they can improve individuals’ ability to apply the skills, knowledge and know-how they learn in education, as they transition into work.
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The study also explores the feasibility of evaluating such programmes, including tracking participants into the labour market. A summary of this report, Lost in Transition, was produced by CET in 2018 and is available on this website.
Institute of Education, University College London
Internship Research
Internship has attracted considerable attention for a number of years and yet until 2011 had rarely been the subject of serious research. In this guide, Prof. David Guile and Ann Lahiff look at the differences between internship, structured work-place learning, and unpaid work experience. They explore how employers offer access to internship and what models of learning are associated with best practice internships. They also offer recommendations for policymakers, companies, stakeholders and for interns/prospective interns.
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Education and Employers
Teenage Apprenticeships, Converting awareness to recruitment
Recent Government figures have shown that despite the overall number of apprenticeships increasing, the number of under 19s starts have stagnated at around 20%. This project explores the characteristics of schools and individuals who buck the trend and asks: what distinguishes schools which guide significant numbers of pupils into apprenticeships from those which do not? What distinguishes young people who express an interest in apprenticeships in their mid-teens and go on to secure one from those who do not?
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The study concludes that apprenticeships suffer from an image problem due to a shortage of knowledge and information and that support should be provided to schools and colleges to further raise the confidence of school staff in providing advice to interested students. It also advocates for more apprenticeship events involving employers; for schools and colleges should do more to engage parents; and for awareness of apprenticeships to be raised at a younger age. It also notes that schools and colleges should do more to challenge gender stereotypes and broaden the aspirations of young women who are thinking about apprenticeships.
Education and Employers Research
Indicators of successful transitions: Teenage attitudes and experiences related to the world of work
This study harnessed insights from UK longitudinal studies to help careers professionals and other school teaching staff identify and prioritise pupils who require greater levels of careers provision as they approach key decision-making points.
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Importantly, the study identifies attitudes and experiences (‘indicators’) which schools can influence in order to better prepare their young people for adult working life. The approach adopted is primarily designed to allow schools to identify students requiring greater levels of support to help them become well prepared.
A questionnaire and scoring system was developed resulting in a toolkit which has been designed to be comprehensive – relevant to students at all attainment levels – by making use of robust UK longitudinal data which compares students of similar characteristics (for example, socio-economic background, geographical area, attainment levels) to identify which factors which make a difference to economic outcomes (earnings and employment) in later life. It is available from the Education and Employers website.
Education and Employers
Drawing the Future
Drawing the Future is a survey which asked primary school children aged seven to eleven to draw a picture of the job they want to do when they grew up: over 20,000 entries were received from the UK and internationally. To determine the factors influencing career choices, the survey asked participants whether they personally knew anyone who did the job, and if not, how they knew about the job, as well as their favourite subject.
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The survey findings highlight that children from an early age often have some sophisticated and thought through ideas about who they want to become when they grow up. They also show that from a young age children often stereotype jobs according to gender and their career choices are based on these assumptions with the majority of boys wanting to be sportsmen and girls wanting to be teachers. Additionally, children’s career aspirations are most influenced by who they know – their parents and friends of parents and the TV and media. Worryingly, less than 1% of children have heard about the jobs through people from the world of work coming to their school. And the survey shows clearly for the first time that this is a global issue.
Institute of Education, University College London
Putting Knowledge to Work
Putting Knowledge to Work challenges conventional notions of academic knowledge as context-free and it demonstrates that there are complex processes of ‘re-contextualising’ knowledge through the design and implementation of work-based learning at higher education levels.
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This two-year project by Karen Evans, David Guile and Judy Harris and its accompanying Book of Exemplars have been produced to encourage curriculum development teams to draw upon the research and think through, carefully and in depth, the purposes and processes involved in work-based learning.
Education and Employers
5th International Conference on Employer Engagement in Education and Training: 2018
On the 5th and 6th July 2018 in London, Education and Employers and the Edge Foundation brought together leading researchers, practitioners and policy makers from around the world to present recent research and discuss employer engagement in education, policy development and delivery and provide a platform to inform governments with innovative policy and leadership in the field.
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This two-day event, focussed on employer engagement in education and training and how it relates to the Government’s plans for social mobility improvement, the implementation of its Industrial Strategy and improving the flow of skills into the labour market post Brexit.
The Education and Employers website holds comprehensive information on this conference with videos and short interviews.
LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts)
Research for Entrepreneurship Training at LAMDA
This project involves research to interrogate the enterprise and professional development tools provided by LAMDA and other organisations in order to develop a programme of entrepreneurship training suitable specifically for LAMDA students and graduates.
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It has become increasingly evident over the past ten years that the creative industries are not only thriving but evolving; as such, graduates are having to look at their careers in new ways, ways in which they must be proactive and confident to create their own work and opportunities, and develop a portfolio career.
The research will find out what LAMDA students and graduates need in order to set up and sustain careers in the creative industries. It will explore what enterprise and professional development tools are currently provided by LAMDA and other organisations; the potential career paths of its alumni; and, how best to prepare them for the industry that they enter into.
The goal is that all students benefit from this research – actors, directors and technicians – helping them to develop an entrepreneurial and collaborative mindset.
Future First
Commerce in the Classroom
This pilot project aims to help young people understand the relevance and possibilities of a career in commerce and international trade. Future First will establish a sustainable network of volunteers from various trade organisations and networks who work in this field to provide employer encounters and learning opportunities in Future First member schools.
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Through this programme, students will gain a greater understanding of what commercial education means and involves, and be exposed to a range of employment and career opportunities, dispelling misconceptions or stereotypes about who can succeed.
Students will be helped to develop their transferable employability skills; to increase their understanding of international trade; to understand the range of employment and career opportunities available within international trade; and, to increase their confidence in their own ability to succeed.
To see how the project is helping young people please click here.
- £50,000
- September 2019 to date
- Website
Enabling Enterprise (Skills Builder)
Leadership for Essential Skills: Transforming Essential Skills Across a Whole School
The Enabling Enterprise (EE) Skills Builder Framework helps schools embed the teaching of eight essential skills - Listening, Presenting, Problem Solving, Creativity, Staying Positive, Aiming High, Leadership and Teamwork - with as much rigour as other parts of the curriculum. The shared language and outcomes for the eight essential skills allows schools to support skill development in young people in a coherent and joined up way.
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Through grants from CET from 2015-18 Enabling Enterprise learned how to support teachers to transform the essential skills of their students. This critical next project aims to create the equivalent toolkit for school leaders, to drive change at the level of a whole school. As part of this EE will create, publish and promote a School Leaders’ Handbook which is a toolkit to help embed the Essential Skills in the Skills Builder Framework at a whole school level.
- £25,000
- September 2019-2020
- Website
Peter Jones Foundation
Establishment of the PJF Alumni Programme
'Empower Alumni' supports graduates from the Peter Jones Foundation (PJF) courses into employment (including apprenticeships), self-employment or higher education (on an enterprising course).
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The alumni programme will help PJF students to both galvanise and utilise the meaningful enterprise experiences from their time at school, as well as develop new skills and networks that are essential to driving both their own career and the UK economy forward, whilst at the same time helping improve social mobility through PJF’s focus on less advantaged students.
In addition, the alumni programme will serve a monitoring and evaluation function and long-term impact evaluation. Through the programme PJF will develop the capacity to harvest and analyse longitudinal data on the outcomes of their programme.
Action Through Enterprise (ATE)
BizATE: Training and Mentoring for Economic Growth – a 2 Year Plan
This project supports ATE’s work to develop a new training and mentoring plan, mentoring workbook and mentoring handbook for entrepreneurs in Lawra, Ghana. The project runs from January 2020 to August 2022.
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The project will address previous lessons learnt from 3 years of CET-funded trainings to increase efficiency, drive forward recommendations made by beneficiaries and staff, and (vitally) fully hand over program delivery to Ghana Staff. This improvement in structure and delivery will increase the sustainability of ATE’s BizATE Programme, as well as the sustainability of the entrepreneurs supported by this programme.
- £26,810
- December 2018 - January 2020
- Website
The Prince’s Trust
The Prince's Trust Enterprise Game
The Prince's Trust digital business simulation Enterprise Game is designed to combat commercial illiteracy by providing young people with the business knowledge and enterprise skills such as finance, production, critical thinking, communication, problem-solving and resilience through an interactive digital game.
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The Enterprise Game is a key component of the Prince’s Trust’s Enterprise Challenge and is designed to be a short, sharp, fun and engaging intervention that will inspire and kick-start the development of enterprise skills, through the application of business knowledge, in a safe and engaging simulation. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds aged 11-18 are the target audience for the Challenge.
The Enterprise Game is scheduled to launch in early 2020.
Education Endowment Foundation
Teaching and Learning Toolkit
The Teaching and Learning Toolkit (and its Early Years companion) are accessible summaries of educational research which provide guidance for teachers and senior leaders on how to use their resources to improve learning outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children and young people. The Toolkits do not make definitive claims about what will work but rather attempt to provide valuable information about what is likely to be beneficial, based on existing evidence. They summarise over 40 approaches to improving learning, summarised in terms of average impact on attainment; cost; and strength of evidence supporting it.
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Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE)
Feasibility Study: Embedding Business Knowledge, Business Practice and Entrepreneurship into the FE Learning Experience
This project looks at how the Further Education (FE) sector can embed business knowledge, practice and entrepreneurship into the FE engineering experience for both full-time and part-time students. The RAE, as Britain’s national academy for engineering, will research what business and enterprise practices already exist and whether such practices are optimal; if they have the potential to be replicated.
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Previous research indicates that the continuing success and prosperity of UK plc depends in part to the health of its engineering sector which in turn needs a steady stream of STEM skills and entrepreneurial endeavour.
Founders4Schools (F4S)
Career Encounters for Students
Founders4Schools (F4S) is a free service for state maintained and private UK schools and colleges that connects students aged 8+ with local leading business leaders. The outcome is for students to be better-informed about their future options, motivated to succeed and inspired to lead enterprising lives.
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Young people can learn from the experience of successful entrepreneurs and employees. Businesses have the opportunity to put their company on the map and to help students develop employability skills. Their Workfinder app connects young people to work placements across the country
Nottingham University Business School (NUBS)
Scaling Business Education for Undergraduate Engineers
It is widely accepted that engineering skills are greatly augmented by commercial and business skills, however the biggest pool of engineering education, Higher Education Institution (HEI) undergraduate degrees, lacks business content. This project supports David Falzani (Honorary Professor at NUBS) and his exploration, discovery and prototyping of a scalable route to introduce commercial and business education to undergraduate engineers, using business prize competitions and seminars.
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To date, competitions and seminars have been achieved at Nottingham University, City University London, University of Bristol and Kingston University. Additional funding from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation has led to an increase in the speed and scaling of prize competitions which will continue into 2019 and beyond.
Action Through Enterprise (ATE)
BizATE – Business Development and Training, Lawra District, Ghana.
BizATE is a training programme which supports entrepreneurs and small business owners in a rural district of Ghana which endures high levels of poverty and where the majority of the population rely on subsistence farming to survive.
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The project provides small business owners (SBOs) with the necessary skills to kick start and grow a thriving business as a way of addressing the need for sustainable income generation in this region. With increased profits and savings, SBOs can support both themselves and their dependents. ATE’s approach ensures high retention and success rates, with SBOs on average trebling their monthly profit and securing savings for the future. Funding for this programme also includes the training of local trainers and consultants to deliver the programme. ATE is the only NGO providing business training in this part of Ghana.
Tom Ravenscroft
The Missing Piece, The Essential Skills That Education Forgot
Tom Ravenscroft believes there is something fundamental missing in education and in his book ‘The Missing Piece’ he reflects on the essential, non-academic skills which will be essential to thrive in the 21st Century. These are teamwork, leadership, problem-solving, creativity, listening, presenting, aiming high and staying positive.
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He reflects on a decade of work with Enabling Enterprise (see ‘Recent Grants’), how he identified these skills, and the and the principles of how they can be built and used.
With a future of increasing automation, Tom makes a powerful argument that these skills are going to be vital not just in a school environment but in life in general.
Young Enterprise
Improving the Skills and Commercial Education of Young People in Wales
Young Enterprise empowers young people to develop their personal and business skills: this project specifically supports their work in Wales so that enterprise education is prioritised and embedded in Welsh schools.
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The primary aim is to help approximately 3,000 learners aged 5-24 in educational centres across the country to develop essential employability skills such as confidence, communication, organisation, initiative, resilience, teamwork, problem solving and financial capability; and, to develop core behaviours such as self-esteem, aspiration, career intention and work readiness.
In 2018-19 the project will also train 70 teachers in enterprise and employability education and 20 teachers in financial and enterprise education. It will also involve the recruitment of volunteers from the world of business and commerce
London Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Young Chamber
CET supported LCCI’s Young Chamber pilot project to improve business engagement in schools, especially (although not exclusively) among SMEs. The project was designed to test out different types of business-school-student interventions in order to identify the best ways to help students and teachers better understand the world of work, and to develop employability skills.
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The project focused on the Croydon area in its initial phase. Ten schools and 45+ businesses were involved with 3,000+ students and pupils benefitting from in a series of events and activities. The project led to the production of a model of business engagement in schools which is being extended in Croydon and delivered more widely across London.”
Enabling Enterprise
Developing Enhanced Training to Teachers to Support Enterprise and Employability Skills
The objective of this project was to improve the teaching of eight key enterprise skills deemed essential to the development of young people; to produce a set of tools to teach them; to make these available at primary and secondary school level; and to evaluate the effectiveness of the project. Enabling Enterprise worked closely with teachers to create short skills videos, and content which is engaging and clear.
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Ultimately, this project was a contributor to the development of the organisation’s Skills Builder Framework (featured under ‘Useful Resources’) and Skills Builder Partnership which is a national coalition of educators, employers and others committed to establishing a common language for essential skills; and, an understanding of the outcomes for your people in developing these skills to a high level of competence.”
Enabling Enterprise
Skills Builder
Developed over four years in cooperation with over 60 organisations and individuals across the sector, Enabling Enterprise’s Skills Builder Framework looks at eight essential skills that children and students need so that they can succeed in life: listening, presenting, problem-solving, creativity, staying positive, aiming high, leadership, teamwork. It takes each of these eight skills and breaks them down into teachable and learnable nuggets - from the age of three through to adulthood. It has been used by 10,000 teachers and over 200,000 children to date.
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Enabling Enterprise has also created a toolkit for employers that offers advice for embedding the essential skills, the Framework and the principles into work with young people. CET supported a project to develop enhanced training to teachers which ultimately contributed to the framework (see Recent Grants).
Commercial Education Trust
Breaking Barriers
'Breaking Barriers' highlights findings from a CET Commercial Education Gathering of education experts, practitioners and researchers, which took place on 20 June 2019 in London. Re-thinking time, contextualising skills, listening to learners, building capacity, exploiting policy churn and sharing learning were the key themes of the day.
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Edge Foundation
Edge Foundation Networks
The Edge Foundation is an independent research organisation which chairs a range of different research networks across its areas of interest. Each brings together relevant researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to make links, share practice and develop joint work.
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These are: the Research Review Group (RRG); Early Career Researchers Network; Skills Shortages Analysis Group; Vocational Philosophy Research Network; Project Based Learning International Champions Network; Innovative Higher Education Network; Island Education Network and the UK Policy Learning Network
Teambuild UK
Sponsorship of the Leadership prize as part of the annual Teambuild construction competition
Teambuild is an organisation which brings together multidisciplinary teams from the construction industry to compete in two-day intensive construction competitions. The Future Leaders competition invites teams from tier one, two and three companies to participate in the completion of a real design and build project, all via a simulated scenario.
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Teambuild attracts competitors from major contractors and consultancies representing all disciplines within the construction industry. CET supports the Prize for Leadership of the Future Leaders Competition.
Future Leaders is not only a training and results driven event but is also an opportunity for early careers staff to network between themselves and different companies.”
Worshipful Company of World Traders Charitable Trust
Tacitus Lecture
The World Traders’ Tacitus Lecture was inaugurated in 1988 and is now believed to be the largest event of its type in the City of London. It is held annually at London’s Guildhall and provides the Company with an opportunity to demonstrate to a wider audience its concern with issues affecting world trade. The Lecture benefits educationalists, business leaders, charities and students.
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In 2019 the Lecture was delivered by Mme. Christine Lagarde who was then Chair and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. CET funded the Tacitus Lecture between 2005 and 2019.
Education and Employers
5th International Conference on Employer Engagement in Education and Training: 2018
On the 5th and 6th July 2018 in London, Education and Employers and the Edge Foundation brought together leading researchers, practitioners and policy makers from around the world to present recent research and discuss employer engagement in education, policy development and delivery and provide a platform to inform governments with innovative policy and leadership in the field.
Read more...
This two-day event, focussed on employer engagement in education and training and how it relates to the Government’s plans for social mobility improvement, the implementation of its Industrial Strategy and improving the flow of skills into the labour market post Brexit.
The Education and Employers website holds comprehensive information on this conference with videos and short interviews.
Employers play a key role in bringing the workplace into the classroom and in helping young people form positive attitudes towards schooling, further and…... Read more
There are real benefits to students engaging in commercial education activities which develop their personal skills; provide guidance on career options; give them work…... Read more