Resource and Information Centre

Governments around the world recognise the importance of skills as driver of socio-economic development. ‘Unrealised Potential: the role of Independent Training Providers in meeting skills needs’ is new research (published September 2019) by AELP and commissioned by the British Council. As Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) policy has increasingly been driven by economic considerations, this series explores the role TVET plays in supporting productivity, business growth

Training providers, who serve 380,000 employers across the country, have confirmed in the latest AELP Member Survey that there are serious issues to resolve in the roll-out of the government’s apprenticeship reforms.

With only two years to go until T Levels become part of the education curriculum, new research published by City & Guilds and AELP reveals that just 17% of UK employers feel that they have a good understanding of the new qualifications, with almost half (49%) rating their understanding as poor. Under T Levels, there will need to be a significant increase in the number of work placement students employers take, with an estimated 180,000 placements needed per year.

The President of the Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL), Dame Ruth Silver, has identified an acute need for FE leaders to ‘forecast and shape change’ and ‘to play a stronger part in building the future of the sector’, saying that FE is ‘under-understood, under-conceptualised, under-researched and under-theorised.’ In early 2018, FETL commissioned AELP Research to help address this need by organising a series of facilitated roundtable discussions at which diverse groups of leaders can