Employability Christine Bertram Erasmus+ Learning Network Belfast 21 May 2015

Agenda 1. What is employability? 2. Employability and the EU strategies 3. What is the problem? 4. How to improve employability 1. High Quality Careers Guidance 2. Evaluating performance

What is employability? Employability is about having the capability to gain initial employment, maintain employment and obtain new employment if required. For the individual, employability depends on: their assets in terms of the knowledge, skills and attitudes they posses, the way they use and deploy those assets, the way they present them to employers, and crucially, the context (e.g. personal circumstances and labour market environment) within which they see work.” (Hillage and Pollard, 1998)

What The Higher Education Academy thinks it is “A set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that makes graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy” Yorke (2006: 8)

The EENEE tries to define indicators considering these factors Psacharopoulos and Schlotter (2010)

Eurydice summarises it as A combination of knowledge, competences and personal attributes that make graduates* more likely to gain employment and progress during their career. Eurydice, 2014 * Graduate here refers to anybody who has completed a course/ qualification, not just at university level.

What employability is NOT A single intervention that fixes all problems Simply teaching people how to do a CV, cover letter and interview A one-size-fits all programme

Key skills for employability

Significance of Employability in the EU 2020 strategy (EC 2010) SMART growth: Employment and Training INCLUSIVE growth: Skills

Significance of employability in the ET2020 strategy Eight key competencies the strategy promotes: communication in the mother tongue; communication in foreign languages; mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology; digital competence; learning to learn; social and civic competences; sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; cultural awareness and expression.

What are the problems?

Mean literacy proficiency in European countries for adults aged whose highest level of education is upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education (2012) Cedefop (2014)

Addressing employability Eurydice suggests the following steps: 1. Involve employers 2. Increase training and work placements 3. Ensure high quality career guidance 4. Monitor graduates’ labour market entry 5. Evaluate performance

Ensure high quality career guidance Career guidance provision throughout the whole student lifecycle, 2012/13 (Eurydice (2014)) UK one of 11 countries in the EU where careers guidance is available within HEI and externally England: Now an all-age service (National Careers Service, Lifelong Learning Accounts) Scotland made this move 10 years earlier

Factors that influence career decisions IES (2013)

Career decision styles IES (2013)

Evaluating performance One of the issues raised at the last event… how to measure employability. ET 2020 strategy has benchmark: ‘by 2020, the share of employed graduates* (20-34 year olds) having left education and training no more than three years before the reference year should be at least 82 %‘ (Council of the European Union 2012) Limited perspective? * graduates here means anyone leaving education and training, not just university

Tools to evaluate performance - Considerations Outputs are easy to measure and can be relatively easily prescribed, monitored and controlled  that’s why people often fall back on them Outcomes (changes in self-confidence, self-efficacy, subjective performance, etc) are more difficult to capture and provide evidence for Distance travelled approaches (see for instance ‘Outcome Star’ or a combination of scales used in psychology) may be an option, but need to be carefully selected Difficult to decide on one tool for everyone Diversity of projects with widely differing aims Some tools that may be appropriate for one project, may not be suitable to capture data for another one Suggested reading: Blades et al ( 2012) Measuring employability skills skills_final_report_march2012.pdf

Literature Cedefop (2014) Adult skills and VET: further findings from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, [Online: and-indicators/statistics-and-graphs/adult-skills-and-vet, Accessed ] Council of the European Union (2012) Council conclusions on the employability of graduates from education and training [Online: en/educ/ pdf, Accessed: 18/05/15] European Commission (2010) Europe 2020 [Online: Accessed 18/05/15] Eurydice (2014) Eurydice Brief, Modernisation of Higher Education in Europe [Online: education/eurydice/documents/thematic_reports/180EN.pdf, Accessed: 18/05/15]

Literature Hillage and Pollard (1998) Employability: Developing a Framework for Policy Analysis, London: DfEE IES (2013) Adult Career Decision Making: Qualitative Research, BIS Research Paper 132, London: BIS Psacharopoulos and Schlotter (2010) Skills for Employability, Economic Growth and Innovation: Monitoring the Relevance of Education and Training Systems, EENEE Analytical Report No. 6, Brussels: DG EAC Yorke (2006) Employability in higher education: what it is – what it is not, The Higher Education Academy Learning & Employability Series 1, York: THEA

Erasmus+ is the European Union programme for education, training, youth and sport. The Erasmus+ UK National Agency is a partnership between the British Council and Ecorys UK. Contact Details Christine Bertram