Student recruitment and development

• Disruption to students from Covid will shape the next decade of Careers Services and graduate employment, with lack of student confidence a major issue.
• Understanding the perceptions of work among different ethnic minorities can boost student recruitment.
• Most employers make claims about their environmental commitments – should sustainability literacy be a recognised graduate skill?
• Virtual work experience expected to remain prominent in 2022.
• New research by Forage explains how employers can boost social mobility.
• Importance of using targeted attraction strategies to engage with young LGBTQ+ people throughout the year.
• Preparing students for the use of online technology, such as asynchronous video interviews, in recruitment.
• Largest ever recruitment drive for Openreach as 4000 new jobs created, including 500 new jobs in Scotland, to connect customers to the Full Fibre broadband network.
• Jacob Ainscough outlines how the government could use the ‘Levelling Up’ agenda to address climate change.

Education

• Fears that scrapping regular testing advice in schools will lead to ‘forced’ home schooling of vulnerable pupils.
• Angela Epstein suggests that a psychometric test is needed to assess credibility of A-Level grades, following inflation during the pandemic.
• Lowest level of college students returning for their second year since 2012, with dropout crisis expected to continue.
• Proportion of 18 year old school-leavers applying for university has risen again this year, at a higher rate than the age group’s demographic growth.
• Many students to significantly struggle financially as maintenance loan increase is less than the rate of inflation and parental earnings threshold is frozen.
• Calls to diversify University campuses as more than a quarter of UK undergraduate and postgraduate students are from ethnic minority backgrounds.
• Government investing £23 million into AI skill development, with up to two thousand scholarships for masters AI conversion courses available. Stephanie Hare discusses how the UK can become a world leader in AI.
• Law changed to allow inmates in open prisons to study for apprenticeships in hospitality and construction, giving them skills to secure work when released.

Economy

• Shampa Roy-Mukherjee discusses how increasing national insurance while the cost-of-living continues to rise could leave 1 million households destitute.
• Under 30s on low wages will be disproportionately impacted by the cost-of-living crisis.