Student Employability – Integrating term-time working into graduate employability

This was a final report of research based on interviews with students and employers with regard to student employability in the local north east labour market

Integrating term-time working into graduate employability development strategies

Government at the time of this project was seeking to improve graduate employability. With work placements for undergraduates struggling to keep up with the expansion in student numbers, term-time working can potentially provide a significant source of employability skills. In recent years, reflecting changes such as the imposition of student fees and ending of maintenance grants, an increasing proportion of students are working. At Northumbria University, for example, research shows that around 60% undergraduates take a job during term-time. Our project builds on previous research into Students in the Labour Market, undertaken by the Northern Economic Research Unit (NERU), and based on interviews with students and employers. For this project, a sample of employers were interviewed with regard to student employability issues. The views of employers were also sought regarding developing more formalised links (i.e. with particular degree course programmes) in relation to student termtime working, as a means of pursuing employability (and other) outcomes. The paper reports on a survey of activity related to employability in other English universities, and incorporates these findings in its discussion of the way forward on this issue

North Tyneside Printing Sector Training Needs Analysis

The printing sector in this region has a proportionately low level of employment compared to the UK as a whole. North Tyneside provides the location for some 36 print-based firms, which account for only 11% of Tyne & Wear’s total print employment. However, this survey indicates that the official data significantly under-estimates the employment size of the sector in North Tyneside

The meaning of poverty: perspectives from a Scottish housing estate

While much poverty research has concentrated on the definition and measurement of poverty, the primary concern of this thesis is the meaning of poverty in contemporary society. It is suggested that, while existing research describes the conditions and hardships that people experience in poverty, much less attention is given to how they make sense of and respond to these conditions. This thesis attempts to address this issue by exploring the narratives of people living on an urban council housing scheme, a group who tend to be regarded by the rest of society as poor and socially excluded.The first part of the thesis examines the subjective definitions and conceptions of poverty held by local residents. It finds that local residents generally resist the idea that they are poor. In their own accounts, they emphasise their personal capacity and scope for control, rather than the constraints that they face. The research goes on to ask: what is it about the experience of people in these areas and their understanding of the meaning of poverty which makes them deny that they are poor? For those interviewed, poverty is interpreted at a personal level as a form of identity associated with a lack of agency. People are identified as poor not by their material circumstances alone, but by their inability to cope with and remain on top of conditions of material hardship. It is in this context that respondents stress their ability to manage and overcome the difficulties they face and by this means seek to demonstrate their personal competence and moral adequacy.In the second part of the thesis, the relationship between poverty, agency and identity is explored with respect to the community and local people's involvement in community action. Two distinct discourses on poverty are identified in the accounts of local residents active in local groups and organisations. An exclusive discourse of poverty identifies poor people as a distinct social group by reference to their weakness, demoralisation and dependent status. Local activists experience this discourse as exclusionary and disempowering. However, a more inclusive discourse on poverty is apparent in the accounts of some activists which links the experience of poverty to more positive forms of collective action and mutual support developed in the community. This discourse is compatible with a conception of people as social agents, actively involved in maintaining their welfare in conditions of relative material deprivation.The thesis raises questions about the ways in which poverty is understood in different contexts and by different groups. It also reveals the problematic nature of poverty discourse for individuals who experience material hardship or belong to groups identified as poor. It is the struggle to maintain a positive self-conception in the light of negative meanings conveyed through poverty discourse that emerges from this study. An important aspect of community-based activity is the rejection of a stigmatised identity as poor people which reduces people to the status of social objects. By contrast, the construction of a more positive social identity emphasises their actions as subjects. The thesis concludes by suggesting that greater attention needs to be given to the social meanings and forms of categorisation involved in defining people as poor. It is proposed that future research should attempt to identify different kinds of poverty discourse and how these relate to particular conceptions of poverty and social perceptions of poor people

Joseph Wiggins (1832-1905)

Joseph Wiggins occupies an unusual niche in arctic history. While undoubtedly an explorer, he devoted most of his career in the North not specifically to exploration but to the development of commercial relations between Great Britain and Russia by the exploitation of the sea route to the Ob' and Yenisey Rivers and thence into the centre of Siberia. He was active in the period during which the technological development of ships enabled the route to be practicable for cargo vessels, but before the Russian Revolution closed the route to trade from the West