The National Skills Forum is a not-for-profit membership organisation which works in partnership with the Associate Parliamentary Skills Group (APSG) and the Skills Commission to raise the profile and status of skills in the UK. We bring together Parliament, business and the skills sector to promote and develop effective skills policy as a central means of personal and economic development for the 21st Century.

Research and Publications

Open to Ideas: Essays on Education and Skills

The National Skills Forum and Associate Parliamentary Skills Group has published a collection of essays on education and skills policy.

In Open to Ideas we have brought together people who have something to say about the big issues facing the education sector. They question common assumptions, identify lessons learned from recent policy experiments and innovations, and suggest new approaches to policy and practice.

Read the collection

Skills Commission inquiry report published

The Skills Commission have launched "Technicans and Progression", the final report of a six-month inquiry into technician and higher-level skills.

Doing Things Differently: Step Changes in Skills & Inclusion focuses on the impact of skills policy on three disproportionately excluded groups: offenders and ex-offenders; people with disabilities; and black and minority ethnic learners.

Download:
Introduction
Black and Minority Ethnic Learners
Offenders & Ex-Offenders
People with Disabilities

Find out more about the report

More Research

Upcoming Events

What's the story? A debate on how the media covers education and skills Launch of "Open to ideas: essays on education and skills"

12 noon, Tuesday 6th December, Parliament
In early December the Associate Parliamentary Skills Group, in partnership with City & Guilds and the Tec Trust Fund, will launch a collection of essays ‘Open to ideas’ penned by leading thinkers from across the education and skills sector. The essays offer up examples of innovative policy and practice and seek to bring new ideas and thinking to Parliamentary debate.

To mark the launch of the collection we will be holding ‘What’s the story’ a debate on how the media covers education and skills policy.

Speakers will include:

Nic Dakin MP, Co-Chair, Associate Parliamentary Skills Group (Chair)
Gerard Kelly, Editor, Times Educational Supplement
Toby Young, Journalist and Co-Founder of West London Free School
Richard Pring, former Director, Oxford University Department of Education; contributor to Open to Ideas
Further speaker TBC

If you would like to attend please email christopher.hall@policyconnect.org.uk.

Recent Events

Job Quality: are skills the answer?
On 8th November the group held a seminar to look at what can be done to improve the quality of low-status jobs. The seminar will focus on in-work progression, links between job quality and economic performance, quality of workplace learning and expanding training opportunities in low-paid and low-skilled jobs. A report summarising the key messages from the seminar will be published soon.

Speakers included:

Nic Dakin MP (Chair)
Dr Adam Marshall, Director of Policy, British Chambers of Commerce
HR Director, Morrisons Supermarkets
Steven Bevan, Managing Director, Work Foundation
Prof. Ewart Keep, Director, ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance

Seminar on the Future of Further Education

On June 15th the National Skills Forum held a seminar to explore the implications of the government's reforms to the FE sector. Discussion at the seminar focussed on the new policy landscape and the increased freedoms and greater institutional autonomy the government is granting to FE colleges.
Read more

More Events

News

Cabinet Office publishes Social Mobility Strategy

06/04/11

New strategy published looking at inter-generational social mobility.

Demos report: "the forgotten half"

31/03/11

New report looks at educational opportunity for “the other 50%” of students who do not go to study at University.

Skills Commission launches new research inquiry

15/03/11

Commission will examine provision of technician and higher level skills

Wolf Report published

07/03/11

Professor Alison Wolf has published her review of vocational education.

News archive: click here to read older news items