Ofsted: rank colleges by student employment rates

By Graeme Paton. Colleges should be ranked by the number of students getting jobs amid continuing concerns over unemployment rates among teenagers, according to Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills).
The Government should use “destination data” to make sure institutions are properly preparing 16- to 19-year-olds for the workplace, it was claimed. In a report, the education watchdog said the best colleges placed a strong emphasis on developing students’ employment skills such as problem-solving, working as a team, applying literacy and numeracy, computing and managing their time properly. But it was feared that most lecturers failed to track teenagers’ progress to make sure courses actually led to jobs.
The disclosure comes amid continuing concerns over unemployment rates among young people who have been hardest hit by the economic downturn. Data released in the summer showed that 968,000 16- to 24-year-olds were not in education, employment or training (NEET) during the second quarter of 2012 – one-in-six of the age group. This included some 875,000 people aged 18-to-24. More...