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Introduction: The Udaan Scheme was implemented in response to enduring conflict, economic downturn, and employment scarcity. Under the Rangarajan Committee, the scheme aimed to address unemployment in a selected region through skill development programmes. Based on practical experience, Udaan aimed to build a competitive workforce for India and the global economy.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to evaluate the success ratio of the Udaan Scheme in addressing the employment challenges faced by the youth.

Need of the study: The chapter highlights the potential of the scheme to be a part of a resilient industry for job employability in politically disturbed areas.

Methodology: The compiled data were analysed using a spreadsheet collected from online sources, providing information on the number of registrations for the skill development programme between March 2012 and May 2018, that is, the programme’s implementation in the pre-UT era, mainly sourced from the Udaan Impact Assessment Report and the Review of the Udaan Scheme in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

Findings: The programme, which provided professional training and increased the job-securing capacity of youth, has had a dismal success rate despite the government’s investment of Rs 246 crore. The initiative has employed less than 10,000 individuals, or at most 10% of the target population, falling short of its claimed goals.

Significance of the study in the global market: The scheme addresses unemployment and career development for educated youth, enhancing India’s economic growth and global competitiveness. By providing skill development and exposure to the corporate sector, it empowers youth and attracts international business opportunities. It aligns with global efforts to bridge the skills gap and showcases India’s commitment to human capital development in a conflict-driven state.

There has been a long-running debate as to which is more important in the job market, education or experience. Traditionally, people have looked at these as exclusive traits of one another; however, more progressive thought sees these as complimentary attributes in perspective and existing employees that can be achieved at the same time through proactive activities such as micro-credentialing. This chapter will explore how formal and informal micro-credentialing processes can be put forward in both education and training environments.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, 2022) shows an increase in severity and frequency of natural disasters in the past years with more organisations being faced with surviving these events than ever before. The recent COVID pandemic has shown how every organisation across the globe can be affected by a disaster and the cascading effects that follow. Techniques such as micro-credentialing is a tool that can be utilised by all organisations to ensure a safer outcome from these events as well as being positioned for better continuity of critical operations through the event helping to increase the survivability and profitability of the affected organisation.

The use of micro-credentialing components successfully could be discussed using any field or discipline. To be applicable to all readers, this chapter primarily focusses on the emergency services/management discipline as an example programme of how micro-credentialing can be efficiently utilised to produce a more successful workforce. Emergency management (EM) truly is an interdisciplinary field that utilises many other fields to protect people, organisations, and communities from emergencies and disasters. More importantly, though, there are components of EM that every field should embrace for safety as well as to ensure continuity of operations through any event, thereby making the components in this chapter applicable to all readers regardless of discipline or organisation.

Entrepreneurship education is being taught to undergraduates in tertiary institutions and fresh graduates in youth programmes to encourage start-ups and create employment as a strategy to stem youth unemployment. As such, entrepreneurship education programmes are expected to include rigorous processes of programme design, implementation and evaluation so as to achieve changes in behaviour, attitude and action of participants measureable in terms of start-up and jobs created. Two entrepreneurship education programmes implemented in Nigeria are evaluated to ascertain the level of effectiveness in design, implementation and evaluation and the outcomes in terms of start-ups and employment created. Research methods adopted in the two programmes combine observation techniques with content analyses, action research in case study and focus group interviews. In addition, test-retest techniques in a quasi-experimental design, with a structured questionnaire is adopted in programme number two only. The findings are that while it is suspected that the design stage is jumped in programme number one, in programme two, the design is poorly done. Implementation is ineffective in the two programmes because objectives did not arise from programme design as they ought to and evaluation methods are inappropriate and so ineffective. The recommendations include review of the design of the two programmes to generate appropriate and measurable objectives; adopting implementation strategies that will achieve the measurable objectives generated from revised programme designs and adopting appropriate evaluation techniques that has capacity to measure outcomes and impact in addition to outputs.

The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of selected characteristics of jobseekers on employers’ decisions regarding potential hires (direct and probabilistic signals). The main focus of the study is to test the impact of jobseekers’ participation in selected active labour market programmes on employers’ hiring decisions for three positions: unskilled worker, skilled worker and administrative employee. Other characteristics tested include age, gender, presence of children in the household, state of health, experience of short- and long-term unemployment and indebtedness.

This study analyses data from a representative survey of employers with five or more employees in the Czech Republic. The survey was conducted in December 2020 using stratified random sampling, combining online questionnaires and personal interviews. The study includes 1,040 employers and uses the factorial survey experiment (FSE) design.

The results of the FSE suggest that the perceived positive impact of completing one of the activation programmes depends on the position for which the candidate is being recruited. While for the unskilled job category, the completion of any of the tested schemes (training, subsidised jobs or public works) had a positive effect; for the skilled job category, only the training and subsidised jobs schemes had a positive effect; and for the administrative job category, public works programme even had a negative effect.

A somewhat limiting factor in the context of this study seems to be the definitions of the positions tested (unskilled and skilled workers and administrative staff). The decision-making of the respondents was somewhat restricted by such broadly defined categories. Typically, studies with FSE designs have a focus on a specific sector of the economy, which allows for a better definition of the positions or jobs under test. The relationship between position and the impact of individual characteristics is clearly a matter for further research.

The results of the study confirm that completion of the activation programme, as well as other candidate characteristics, constitute differentiating signals for employers that influence their hiring decisions. At the same time, there is evidence that the training programme and the subsidised jobs programme are effective in terms of increasing participants’ chances of employment.

The demand side should be included in the evaluation of activation policies. The design of the FSE provides an appropriate way to test the impact of activation measures on the decision-making of employers.

The aim of this scoping review was to identify key characteristics related to strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable training and professional development (PD) of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), teaching assistants (TAs), and tutors. While the continuous, coherent and responsive programmes for such training and PD may address needs that are congruent with the needs of other sessional teachers, the literature has not focussed on GTA training and PD that support the longer-term retention of GTAs as sessional teachers.

In this scoping review, we devised a search strategy to identify literature relating to the key characteristics of strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and professional development in higher education settings. We were guided by the frameworks for such reviews developed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), Levac et al. (2010) and Westphaln et al. (2021). We used PRISMA guidelines to guide our reporting processes, and used thematic analysis practice (Braun and Clarke, 2022) as our analytical approach in order to identify and discuss the key themes.

We identified that strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and PD frame GTAs as future academics and leaders in teaching; provide institutional support and investment in teaching; deliver departmental training; facilitate peer support; provide pedagogical training; implement training strategies; and support the teacher identity of GTAs.

These findings add to the body of research that explores how strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and PD address and meet the needs common to all sessional teachers constrained by the precarity of the part-time faculty/academia. While our findings indicate such training and PD enhance the quality of teaching available to university students, this effect is dependent on institutional support and facilitation of peer and faculty networks.

Purpose: This chapter investigates the current skill gap in small-scale industries, the need for skill development and digital training in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME), and reviews policies for skill development and solutions.

Need for the Study: While the legislature and organisations have initiated various considerations for the successful implementation of the Skill Development System in the country’s MSMEs, there are significant challenges that must be addressed quickly to fill the skill gap in workers in this digital era.

Research Methodology: Secondary data has been used for the chapter review. Analysis has been done based on review data from women handloom and handicraft workers in the micro or craft industry who received a Star rating from the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) partners in Lucknow. For data collection, a questionnaire based on random sampling was used. The data were analysed using a rudimentary weighted average and a percentage technique.

Findings: The studies provide answers to some fundamental problems: are small industry employees indeed mobilised to be skilled outside the official schooling system? Is the training delivery mechanism adequate to prepare pupils for employment? Would industries be willing to reduce minimum qualification criteria to foster skill development?

Practical Implication: Non-technical aptitudes digital and soft skills for workers in this sector should be emphasised in MSMEs, and significant reforms in MSME sectors and capacity-building education and training programmes should be implemented in the Indian industry to generate small and medium enterprises production and employment.

By examining types of literacies taught by public libraries and the modes through which these programs were offered, this study aims to explore how public libraries might integrate data literacy training for the general public into existing library educational programs.

This study examined programs offered in 30 US public libraries during 2019 and 2020 to better understand types of literacy education announced to the public through library website listings and Facebook Events pages.

While public libraries offered educational programs in literacy areas ranging from basic reading and writing to technology, vocational skills, health literacy and more, data literacy training was not widely offered. However, this study identified many already-existing programs highly compatible for integrating with data literacy training.

This study offered new insights into both the literacies taught in public library programs as well as ways for public libraries to integrate data literacy training into existing educational programming, in order to better provide data literacy education for the general public.

This paper aims to consider the practices and experiences of the new school-based mentors for Early Career Teachers (ECT's), emerging from the UK Government's new early career framework (ECF) policy (DfE, 2019a). The paper uses Lipsky's (2010) framing of professionals as “street level bureaucrats” to consider the extent to which the ECT mentors, as new policy actors, exercise professional discretion (Lipsky, 2010) in negotiating and aligning the new ECF policy with existing practice.

To research the mentor's interpretation and enactment of the new ECF policy, semi structured interviews were undertaken with an initial sample of nine mentors and four induction tutors who were also mentors. Online semi structured interviews were held, lasting around 50 min. This method was largely pragmatic as the study started during a period when schools were still cautious of face-to-face visitors in terms of COVID-19. Although the benefits for the interviewer experiencing the culture and context in which the ECT mentor was situated were lost, offering online interviews was critical in securing mentors' time.

Findings suggest a disconnect between the intentions of the policy and the reality of its enactment at a local level. The ECT mentors have limited professional discretion, but some are exercising this in relation to their own professional development and the training they are providing for their ECTs. Most of the mentors are adapting the ECT's professional development journey whilst mindful of the programme requirements. The degree to which the ECT mentors used professional discretion was linked and limited largely by their own levels of confidence and experience of mentoring, and to a lesser extent the culture of their schools.

The ECF policy represents an important step in acknowledging the need to professionally develop mentors for the work they undertake supporting beginning teachers. However, the time and the content of the mentor training have not been given sufficient attention and remains a hugely missed opportunity. It does not appear to be recognised by the government policy makers but more significantly and concerning in this research sample it is not being recognised sufficiently by those mentoring the ECTs themselves.

There is an urgent need by the UK government and school leaders to understand the link between the quality of mentor preparation and the quality of the ECTs who will be entering the profession and influencing the quality of education in future years. More time and resourcing need to be focussed on the professional development of mentors enabling them to exercise professional discretion in increasingly sophisticated ways in relation to the implementation of the ECF policy.

The ECF policy is the latest English government response to international concerns around the recruitment and retention of teachers. The policy mandates for a new policy actor: the ECT mentor, responsible for the support and professional development of beginning teachers. The nature of the mentor's role in relation to the policy is emerging and provides an interesting case study in the disconnect between the intentions of a policy and its initial enactment on the ground. The mentors may be viewed as street level bureaucrats exercising degrees of professional discretion as they interpret the policy in their own school context.

By older adulthood, the majority of individuals will have experienced at least one traumatic event. Trauma-informed care (TIC) is proposed to improve effectivity of health-care provision and to reduce likelihood of services causing retraumatisation. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of staff training in TIC in older adult services.

TIC training was delivered across eight Older Adult Community Mental Health Teams in the same UK organisation. Questionnaires were administered before and after training: a psychometrically robust measure, the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care, was used to assess TIC-related attitudes, and a service-developed scale was used to measure changes in TIC competence. Data was analysed using linear mixed effects modelling (LMM). Qualitative data regarding the impact of training was gathered one month after training through a free-text questionnaire.

There were 45 participants, all of whom were white British. LMM on pre- and post-data revealed that staff training significantly increased competencies across all measured TIC domains. Overall, staff attitudes were also significantly more trauma-informed after training. Qualitatively, staff identified time as the only additional resource required to deliver the skills and knowledge gained from training.

Training was found to be effective in increasing TIC-related skills and attitudes. Organisations aiming to become trauma-informed should consider staff training as one aspect of a wider development plan.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine TIC training for staff working in Older Adults Mental Health Services. Recommendations for services aiming to develop a trauma-informed culture have been provided.