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A meeting of Directors of Skills took place on 14 May 2019; it was organised by the IER, and hosted by West Midlands Combined Authority.

It brought together Directors of Skills from seven of the nine current Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) to share and discuss their experiences of skills devolution and the development of their Local Industrial Strategies.

The workshop, chaired by Olly Newton of the Edge Foundation, also heard presentations on skills ecosystems and apprenticeships by Ewart Keep (Director of SKOPE, Oxford University) and Peter Dickinson (Senior Research Fellow, IER).

A follow-up Director of Skills workshop is planned for Autumn 2019.

In late April/early May Clare Lyonette, Gaby Atfield and Sudipa Sarkar visited India for the first of a series of workshops as part of the project 'Inequalities and skills acquisition in young people: Identification of factors affecting successful outcomes in the DDU-GKY Indian skills programme for unemployed young people’.

The IER team was joined by Bhaskar Chakravorty, an IER PhD student and research assistant, and , co-investigator on the project, based at Xavier Institute of Social Service (). During the first workshop visit, the IER team delivered workshops to Master's students at XISS on quantitative and qualitative research methods, as well as engaged with key local stakeholders. 

Jenny Bimrose presented at the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling () international conference in April 2019 on LMI for All.

She examined the integration of labour market information (LMI) with information communications technology (ICT) as a case study of the changing professional identity of career practitioners.

Drawing on two major research studies, this workshop focused on the influences of the changing nature, and integration of LMI into career practice through the use of ICT, on the professional identity transformation of career practitioners.

Find out more.

New research on the educational psychology (EP) workforce conducted by the IER on behalf of the Department for Education (DfE) is now available online.

The draws on mixed-methods research to map the current distribution and demographic profile of the Local Authority (LA) EP workforce in England and, where possible, also the non-LA EP workforce. It provides evidence on factors driving shortages of trainee and qualified EPs in LAs facing recruitment and retention difficulties. It also makes recommendations on the current training model for EPs.

IER is inviting applications for an ESRC-funded PhD studentship from the Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Partnership. This Studentship is offered through IER in collaboration with the. It will focus on 'Understanding employer delivery of good work in the UK' and will be supervised by Professor Chris Warhurst and Sally Wright. For full details about the scholarship click here and for information on how to apply here.

Application deadline: Thursday, 18th April at 12.00 noon. Interviews will take place on Monday 29th April.