Review of the economic benefits of training and qualifications, as shown by research based on cross sectional and administrative data

Report that provides evidence on employment and earnings benefits from vocational qualifications. This includes: - the wage and employment benefits which learners gain from different qualifications - the value of qualifications held in the working age population and how far returns might vary for different individuals and in different circumstances The report reviewed recent research that took different approaches. These approaches: - used new matched data which matches learner information with their employment and earnings data from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and their benefit claims from the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) - applied different well-established techniques to recent labour force survey data It concludes that the two approaches answer slightly different questions about the benefits of vocational training, and government should continue to use both. The matched data, because of its large sample size, has great potential to become the main source of future work. However we need to understand some issues with the data before this can happen

Measuring additionality in apprenticeships

This report follows the research paper on Assessing Public Investment in Education and Skills. It considers how best to estimate the value added by government investment in apprenticeships: - to what extent does the government pay for training which employers would have paid for themselves? - how much apprenticeship and other work-based training would take place without public funding? It looks at how we can use existing datasets to improve our understanding of this issue, especially surveys which have become available since the earlier research paper. It also recommends what further data can be collected and analysed in a cost-effective way

Vulnerability of London’s Economy to Climate Change: Sensitivity to Production Loss

A variant of the Adaptive Regional Input-Output model (ARIO) has been developed to explore the sensitivity of the London economy to loss of production capacity in sectors affected by climate change related damage. The model is designed for linking to an Event Accounting Matrix (EAM) produced by climate and engineering teams, and then follow this damage through direct and indirect losses in the economy during a recovery process that is either demand-led (in which recovery of production capacity takes place only as demand recovers) or investment-led (where recovery of production capacity can precede demand). Outputs from the model are used to assess the relative vulnerability of London’s economy to production capacity (Capital stock) loss in each of the 42 economic sectors, for purposes of identifying where to most effectively allocate resources to climate change adaptation strategies or to recovery operations when used in conjunction with an EAM. Measures of impact related to GDP loss, recovery time and the ratio of indirect to direct losses are developed for these scenarios. Results show that indirect losses are a significant component of total losses, with a multiplier of between 1.3 and 2 depending on the scale of initial damage

Increased Arctic sea ice volume after anomalously low melting in 2013

Changes in Arctic sea ice volume impact on regional heat and freshwater budgets, on patterns of atmospheric circulation at lower latitudes and, potentially, on global climate. Despite a well-documented ~40% decline in summer Arctic sea ice extent since the late 1970’s, it has been difficult to quantify trends in sea ice volume because detailed thickness observations have been lacking. Here, we assess changes in northern hemisphere sea ice thickness and volume using five years of CryoSat-2 measurements. Between autumn 2010 and 2012, there was a 14% reduction in Arctic sea ice volume, in keeping with the long-term decline in extent. However, we observe 33% and 25% more ice in autumn 2013 and 2014, respectively, relative to the 2010-2012 seasonal mean, offsetting earlier losses. The increase was driven by the retention of thick sea ice northwest of Greenland during 2013 which, in turn, was associated with a 5% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred – conditions more typical of the late 1990’s. In contrast, springtime Arctic sea ice volume has remained stable. The sharp increase in sea ice volume after just one cool summer indicates that Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than has been previously considered