Informed Scotland July/August 2019 – Upskilling, reskilling & future planning
Learning & skills was a hive of hot topics over summer 2019. We could have added more to those listed on the cover, such as education & business engagement, mental health & wellbeing, community learning & development, STEM and skills for rural Scotland.
The words of the season were ‘upskilling’ and ‘reskilling’.
The need to prepare those already in the workplace for automation, future skills and work has taken on greater urgency as the pace of significant change increases. Add to that the shortage of ready-skilled, available candidates, exacerbated by Brexit uncertainty, and unsurprisingly we will see more of this over the months ahead.
In the meantime take a look at Scottish Funding Council’s guidance for a new Upskilling Fund for universities, and a Skills Development Scotland report on reskilling and upskilling for ecommerce.
Other studies, surveys and statistics worth seeking out:
- The Open University’s third annual Business Barometer examining skills shortages
- the first separate report on Graduate Apprenticeships from SDS
- and an interesting SDS report on the challenges of circular economy skills for manufacturing
- Nesta’s reports on the digital skills ‘you really need’, and on what motivates adults to learn new skills in the workplace
- and a timely Nesta report on ‘making the most of technology in education’, with Glasgow City Council’s iPads for schools announcement hitting the headlines
- an insightful IPPR Centre for Justice report on Women, automation and equality in the digital age
- and Education Scotland and CLD Standards Council’s detailed research report on the CLD workforce.
Fabulous feedback from a subscriber for our Organisations & People Special published earlier this month: I just wanted to thank you for this. It is an amazing piece of work, hugely useful.
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