Alison Wolf

What do the GCSE Results tell us about employment propects?

Mick Fealty on August 25, 2011, 2:54 pm

| Readers 26

The truth is, probably not a great deal. The trend in Northern Ireland is pretty established: best top end performances in the UK; and the worst record of students leaving with no qualifications at all. Education Minister John O’Dowd has been questioned several times about a .5% drop in the NI performance; which, to be fair to the Minister, is probably neither here nor there. The real problem is that after four years of Education being devolved to Stormont we …

Emphasis on youth skills rather than qualifications the way out of recession?

Mick Fealty on March 15, 2011, 7:41 pm

| Readers 4

In the Republic the live register of unemployed hit the highest levels since the late 1990s. One aspect of it is the limited capacity for retraining, or training on the job. Eamon McDwyer, a local Cavan businessman told Slugger on the #RTERoadtrip that rigid enforcement of limits on jobseekers allowance an opportunity was being missed. Listen! In England, Professor Alison Wolf has been warning for some years of “a complete disintegration of the youth labour market”, as “successive governments obsessed …