
Show Notes
How do Further Education Colleges contribute to the provision of skills needed for innovation and productivity in regions, cities and towns? How do they identify what businesses need, and how do they work with firms, local government and other schools? This episode of Productivity Puzzles focuses on the findings of a summary report looking into these issues, which was commissioned by The Productivity Institute and supported by the Gatsby Foundation.
Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by:
Jen Nelles, Senior Research Fellow with the Innovation Caucus and co-director of the Oxford Regions, Innovation, and Enterprise Lab (ORIEL) at Oxford Brookes Business School. Ben Verinder, Founder and Managing Director of Chalkstream Ltd.
For more information on the topic:
J. Nelles, B. Verinder, K. Walsh and T. Vorley (2023) Skills, Innovation, and Productivity: The Role of Further Education Colleges in Local and Regional Ecosystems, The Productivity Institute and Innovation Caucus. J.Nelles, K. Walsh, M. Papazoglu, T. Vorley (2022) FECS, innovation, and skills: A literature review, Productivity Insights Paper No. 012, The Productivity Institute.
About Productivity Puzzles:
Productivity Puzzles is brought to you by The Productivity Institute, a research body involving nine academic institutions across the UK, eight Regional Productivity Forums throughout the nation, and a national independent Productivity Commission to advise policy makers at all levels of government. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
More from Productivity Puzzles
Is the UK’s recent productivity recovery a sign of lasting improvement? How could AI, technology adoption and shifting global economic conditions shape the country’s future productivity?
Generative AI has moved from curiosity to everyday tool with remarkable speed. But the big productivity question is not simply whether people are using it; it is whether firms, sectors and economies can turn that use into lasting productivity gains.
Why do firms invest when they do and not necessarily when they should? Are firms too cautious to invest? Or just realistic about uncertainty? Is the real investment gap about money or about mindset?
If one in five working‑age people are inactive, what does that say about the UK’s productivity problem? Why does ill health push so many people out of work in the UK, but not in peer countries?
If universities are engines of growth, why isn’t productivity accelerating? What’s the point of educating graduates if regions can’t keep or use them?