Experience Required: capability and building work readiness
| Title | Experience Required: capability and building work readiness |
| Author(s) | Matt Grist and Phillida Cheetham |
| Organisation | DEMOS |
| Date | 25 May 2011 |
| No. of pages | 112 |
| Key words | neets; volunteering; work experience; labour market; transferable skills; youth unemployment; employment and skills |
| Description | A survey of capability building programmes in the UK to see how a more positive approach could be adopted through full-time volunteering programmes at a national level so that young people could gain experience to succeed in the labour market. In FE colleges in Luton, Milton Keynes and Nottingham, the researchers measured capabilities and attitudes of the young people taking part in a pilot of talent year, a 44-week full-time volunteering programme aimed at giving young people who are NEET opportunities to gain positive social experiences and work experiences, and to study for qualifications. |
| Select quotations | “Recent research has shown that only 1% of 16-18-year-olds are continuously NEET between those ages and up to 31% of the same cohort are NEET at some point during this period. There never was a stubborn underclass completely disengaged from education and employment. There was simply a fifth of young people ‘churning’ in and out of education and employment.” “…young people today often require two kinds of experience before they can embark on fruitful careers. One is meaningful work experience, which achieves two things: it clarifies expectations and aspirations around what work is like and what work a person might like to do; and it builds the general work habits and ‘transferable’ skills that employers rate so highly (eg using initiative, developing communication and social skills, problem solving etc). The other kind of experience is more informal and harder to pin down, but it consists of working with other people to achieve common goals…” Recommendations: - “to open up a wider variety of opportunities for young people to gain experience that prepares them for further learning or work
- to dovetail such opportunities into the welfare-to-work and benefits system
- to reform the funding mechanisms for post-16 education so that equity in spending is achieved and funds are available to pursue a wider variety of learning opportunities.”
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| Link | www.demos.co.uk/files/Experienced_required_-_web.pdf?1307027227 |
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