Lindsay Deswert, one of the lead practitioners from New College Durham:

Since its launch six months ago REED NCFE’s Baseline Employability Skills Test (BESTest) has been taken by over 15,000 students in England. The results provide a unique insight in to the employability skills profile of your students and, more importantly, tells us what we all want to know; what specifically are the main employability skills challenges faced by your students?

In previous articles I have looked at ways to overcome some of the challenges of preparing learners for the workplace. This time, though, maybe you would like to hear from learners themselves.

Despite the UK’s economy recording a 12th consecutive quarter of growth, the job market is as competitive as ever and for young people the statistics are somewhat alarming. Excluding young people not in full-time education, 414,000 people aged 16-24 were unemployed in January-March 2016, highlighting just how competitive the jobs market is for 16-24 year olds in the UK.

Most Colleges that I work with are rightly obsessed about putting their learners first. Making sure that the best interests of learners are right at the heart of everything they do.