More effective skills utilisation : shifting the terrain of skills policy in Scotland

This paper examines shifts in skills policy in Scotland towards emphasising the importance of effective skills utilisation. Turning policy into practice, however, requires a better understanding than currently exists of skills utilisation in order to facilitate better measurement, evaluation and intervention. This paper aims to contribute to such an understanding. We suggest that effective skills utilisation comprises two distinct elements: the use of better skills and the better use of skills, with the former crucial to the development of a high skills economy and the latter crucial to realising existing untapped workforce potential. We further argue that skills utilisation is most likely where workers have the ability, motivation and opportunity to deploy their skills effectively. We conclude by advocating greater collaboration in skills utilisation practice and research between relevant stakeholders, drawing on European experiences and an approach – which we call ASPiRRE – that envelops actors, structures, protocols, responsibilities, resources and expertise in order to align distinct stakeholder interests and encourage innovative practice in skills deployment

The knowledge economy: An opportunity for radical workplace intervention?

This article has two features. The first offers a brief overview of the purpose and character of radical social science, specially, labour process analysis, and its shortcomings in this respect. The second highlights how challenging current orthodox thinking about the future of work and employment can be used to overcome those shortcomings. It outlines one possible reworking of this orthodoxy to exploit it to push for amelioration of that work and employment. More specifically, a critique of knowledge work is complemented with suggestions drawn from a wide range of evidence-based secondary literature on work and employment with the purpose of indicating how the current knowledge economy policy agenda can be turned to create the potential for the ‘better job’

Estimating the Demand for Union-Led Learning in Scotland

This research paper was commissioned and funded by the Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC). It is being disseminated through the TUC’s unionlearn High Road project. The project is part of a community programme called Equal – a European Social Fund initiative that tests and promotes new means of combating all forms of discrimination and inequality in the labour market. The GB Equal Support Unit is managed by ECOTEC. Unionlearn is the TUC organisation that supports union-led strategies on learning and skills. It helps unions open up learning and skills opportunities for their members and to develop trade union education for their representatives and officers.

Valuable assets : a general formal investigation into the role and status of classroom assistants in Scotland's primary school

Based on the earlier pilot research conducted by SCER, the EOC instigated a General Formal Investigation (GFI) of the role and status of classroom assistants in Scotland's primary schools. As part of the GFI, SCER was commissioned to conduct a national survey of classroom assistants, teachers and head teachers. Primary data was generated from a Scotland-wide, large scale survey sent to over 1000 primary schools. Interviews were also conducted with Directors of Education and the Scottish Executive Education Department

Newly professionalised physiotherapists : symbolic or substantive change?

Purpose: There is renewed interest in the professions as a range of occupations pursue professionalisation projects. The purpose of this paper is turn analysis to an important omission in current research – the skills deployed in the work of these professions. Such research is necessary because skills determine the formal classification of occupations as a profession. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on qualitative research, this paper explores the deployment of skills in work of one newly professionalised occupation in the UK’s National Health Service – physiotherapists. Findings: The findings point to a disconnect between how this occupation has become a profession (the skills to get the job, and related political manoeuvring by representative bodies) and the mixed outcomes for their skills deployment (the skills to do the job) in work as a profession. Originality/value: The paper provides missing empirical understanding of change for this new profession, and new conceptualisation of that change as both symbolic and substantive, with a “double hybridity” around occupational control and skill deployment for physiotherapists as a profession

The promised land? Why social inequalities are systemic in the creative industries

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a more comprehensive understanding of why social inequalities and discrimination remain in the creative industries. Design/methodology/approach - The paper synthesizes existing academic and industry research and data, with a particular focus on the creative media industries. Findings - The paper reveals that existing understanding of the lack of diversity in the creative industries' workforce is conceptually limited. Better understanding is enabled through an approach centred on the creative industries' model of production. This approach explains why disadvantage and discrimination are systemic, not transitory. Practical implications - The findings suggest that current policy assumptions about the creative industries are misguided and need to be reconsidered. The findings also indicate how future research of the creative industries ought to be framed. Originality/value - The paper provides a novel synthesis of existing research and data to explain how the creative industries' model of production translates into particular features of work and employment, which then translate into social inequalities that entrench discrimination based on sex, race and class

Valuable assets: phase 2 of a general formal investigation into the role and status of classroom assistants in Scotland's secondary and special schools

The aim of this research is to extend existing data by considering classroom assistants in secondary and special schools in Scotland. The research examines the work and employment of classroom assistants and in particular explores the reasons for any role stretch amongst this group

Higher and Further Education Students' Income, Expenditure and Debt in Scotland 2007-08

This report presents findings from the second study of the income, expenditure and debt of students studying higher education (HE) and further education (FE) in Scotland in 2007-08. The study was commissioned by the Scottish Government and conducted by the Scottish Centre for Employment Research at the University of Strathclyde Business School in conjunction with colleagues from the Business School and Department of Economics of the University of Glasgow. The aim of the study is to examine Scottish-domiciled higher and further education students' finances, particularly their income, expenditure, debt and savings, and their attitudes to the financing of study in Scotland. Where appropriate this data is then compared to the findings of the previous 2004-05 Scottish survey as well as a control group of young Scots who are not students