Alexander McTier

Integrating employment and skills: the role of community-based learning

Community-based learning delivers a diverse range of learning opportunities in community venues across the UK to all sections of society. Its outreach is extensive yet the sector is often overlooked by employability policy-makers and practitioners. Following the Leitch Review of Skills and the UK governments policy announcement to integrate more closely employment and skills services, this article aims to overcome this lack of recognition by first generating a pragmatic definition of community-based learning before highlighting the potentially significant role that it can play in supporting people to enter, sustain and progress in employment. Set within the UK policy context, the article draws on the findings of two Glasgow research studies into community-based learning to give a balanced assessment of the sectors contribution to the employability agenda. In highlighting both the benefits and the limitations of community-based learning to achieve employment outcomes, the article concludes with recommendations and potential areas for future research into how employment and community-based learning services could be more closely integrated to achieve stronger employment outcomes.

Influence of Work–Welfare Cycling and Labour Market Segmentation on Employment Histories of Young Long-Term Unemployed:

The onset of the ‘Great Recession’ from 2008 was associated with a significant increase in long-term unemployment among young people. Work–welfare cycling has been put forward as a contributory factor. Drawing on a large-scale survey of long-term unemployed young people, this article argues that segmented labour market theory provides a strong explanatory framework for understanding the nature of long-term unemployment among young people, with the literature on work–welfare cycling contributing to an understanding of one of the processes by which precarious employment impacts on employability and labour supply. A second key finding is the heterogeneous nature of the young long-term unemployed, which in turn requires policy responses more customized to the needs of the different groups.