Newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer did not hold back at the launch of Skills England -- a new government agency -- in July 2024. The Labour Party's 2024 election manifesto had stated that Skills England would 'bring together business, training providers and unions with national and local government to ensure we have the highly trained…

Universities are critical to the success of a growth-driving industrial strategy, and to the sector plans, which must capitalise on the higher education sector's contributions: (1) developing a high-skilled workforce for the nation; (2) collaborating with businesses, further education colleges and Mayoral Strategic Authorities to bring coherence…

In the early 1960s, the Ford Foundation funded numerous projects in Turkey, primarily concerning science education and science policy. Related to the post-Sputnik debates on "scientific manpower needs," and modernisation theory's emphasis on "industrialising elites" in the developing world, these projects were the products of…

The current historic COVID-19 Pandemic moment has thrown into sharp relief the need for flexible and rigorous higher education that meets upskilling and reskilling needs of global workforces. Discussions of micro-credentialing predate the Pandemic but have received increased focus as potentially assisting in addressing perceived skills gaps.…

In this paper I present a critical discussion of the ways that multilingualism is conceptualised in the context of higher education in Timor-Leste, a small, developing nation in South-East Asia. Drawing on a range of ethnographic data collected at multiple Timorese tertiary institutions from 2015 to 2018, I focus especially on the language-related…

The Indonesian labor force remains poorly educated and ill equipped to tackle the growing challenges of meeting contemporary industry requirements. While many countries aspire to equip future generations with the skills, knowledge and attitudes for a future working life, the relationship between the 'world of work' and the current Indonesian…

Healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand is changing with the aim of becoming truly universal. Development of a new curriculum model in the education of health professionals can aid this goal through increased focus on community needs and flexibility for multiple health professional registrations. Universal healthcare and disability support are promoted…

This historical exploration of the development of the academic workforce in the UK and France was triggered by the observation of significant similarities in contemporary debates on casualisation, and segmentation despite their distinctive HE systems. We develop a quantitative history of academic staff to understand why the differences in the two…

In this article the role of Human Resource Management (HRM) in the UK Higher Education (HE) sector is interrogated, with a focus on the Gig Academy. A literature review of the casualisation of academics in the sector is undertaken and critiqued through the consultative unitarist values and behaviours of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and…

Over the past 20 years, there has been a significant increase in the number and complexity of clinical research studies. As a result, Clinical Research Professionals (CRPs), a workforce critical to the success of clinical research, have seen commensurate increases in workload and responsibilities. Unfortunately, there has not been a parallel…

The early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce is foundational for providing high-quality learning, development and well-being experiences for young children. Policies can support the development of this workforce by addressing requirements for initial education and continuing professional development, as well as the working conditions of…

This article explores how the UK Conservative Government's Department for Education is taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to restructure higher education in England towards labour-power production. There is nothing new in UK governments seeking to reshape higher education for labour-power development. But under cover of apparent concern for…

This paper examines workforce reform in early childhood education in England, specifically the policy trajectory that led to implementation of the Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS) qualification in 2014. Taking a critical perspective on policy analysis, the paper uses rhetorical analysis to make sense of the how EYTS is understood within workforce…

Policy cycles are initiated via a variety of context-bound causal drivers. In situations where systemic reform is desired, agenda-setting is vital to this process. This paper examines 'The National Discussion on Scottish Education', which was a sequence of stakeholder engagements promoted as a listening exercise to enable policy agenda-setting for…

This article critically reviews the World Bank's latest high-profile report on skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the Report's prescriptions and recommendations are broadly in line with those of national skills development strategies elsewhere in both the developed and developing world, its overall analysis is quite limited and…