Search results

This paper aims to explore how environmental employment can promote desistance among criminalised children. Research demonstrates that being immersed in and interacting with the natural environment has a positive impact upon well-being and behaviour, including reduced aggressive and violent behaviours. However, how exposure to the natural environment might promote desistance amongst children with persistent criminal involvement is unclear.

This paper examines, through semi-structured interviews and participant observations, the experiences of n = 23 criminalised children aged 16–18 employed in outdoor work at a UK social enterprise.

The findings demonstrate how working in the natural environment can provide a safe space for children, where they can build positive relationships, learn valuable skills and reconnect with the world outside of the high-pressure, conflict-driven spaces in which they typically occupy.

This research highlights the relevance of the setting in which child rehabilitation takes place and the potential role of natural environments in providing places and opportunities which support pro-social identity development and desistance for children.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of and barriers to reporting female genital mutilation (FGM) by victims and survivors of FGM to the police in England and Wales.

The paper is based on 14 interviews conducted with adult survivors and victims of FGM. A combination of 1:1 and group interviews were used, based on the preference of the respondents. Respondents were recruited in collaboration with specialist non-governmental organisations and major stakeholders in the area of honour-based violence and black and minority ethnic communities.

A key finding in this research was that all victims/survivors the authors interviewed stated that they did not support the practice of FGM, and that they would not follow it for younger women in their own family. Second, the authors found that none of the respondents had reported their experience to the police. Third, they identified key barriers to reporting, which included: their belief that reporting their own experience would not serve any purpose because they had experienced FGM as children, and in another country; and that they did not feel able to report new incidents of FGM in the community because of a lack of trust in the police due to previous negative experiences. Finally, they believed that FGM could be prevented only by work within the community, and not through engagement with the criminal justice system.

This is, to our knowledge, one of the first papers that is based on victims and survivors’ perceptions that explores barriers to reporting cases of FGM to the police, and offers levers for change.

This paper introduces a new approach to extracting the employability value of school/further education (FE) curriculums, using textual analysis to surface the transferable skills from UK curriculum documentation. The higher education extracted employability concept already established by the author is applied to help learners articulate the skills value of their knowledge-focused qualifications, closing the gap between the academic learning and the workplace. Proposals for additions to existing curriculum documentation would enable delivery of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD's) aspiration to embed skill development in school education.

Manual textual analysis of United Kingdom A Level, General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and Scottish academic qualifications surfaced a database of transferable skills, which are categorised, and their interrelationships were analysed.

Relatively few skills are explicitly articulated in curriculum documentation, revealing issues for learners recognising and articulating transferable skills. Extracted employability surfaces significant value from curriculum by identifying over 200 transferable skills, framed in the language employers recognise, thus closing the perceived “skills gap”. Comparisons reveal significantly greater diversity of skills innate to subjects perceived as “less academic”.

Learners will find it easier to recognise a comprehensive language of transferable skills, aligned with what employers need, and fundamental to career decision-making through understanding the relationships between academic qualifications and work.

Learners who understand the wider value of their qualifications beyond knowledge focus, particularly in relation to transferable skills, are better able to be join, navigate and be agile in a challenging employment market.

Higher education (HE) concepts of employability are not well-established or understood in schools. This new approach articulates it through transferable skills within existing academic curriculum.