The City & Guilds Group and our businesses research current key issues facing skills development.

We do this in partnership with research agencies and key stakeholders who are carefully chosen to ensure their expertise matches the scope and aim of the research project.

Researching the skills sector allows us to support and improve the sector and influence future changes in the skills landscape. This benefits those who work with us – businesses, training providers, governments and individuals.

Once a research project is completed, we launch the findings to the media and share it with our partners. Gaining support from high-profile people within industry and policy allows the findings to reach a wide audience of decision-makers.

How do we identify research projects?

To identify research projects, we look at factors that are having an impact on the skills landscape and those we work with – such as global trends, policy or attitudes towards vocational education and work-based training.

Looking deeper into these trends might then reveal issues and blockers to skills development, which we can then begin to address; or it might reveal areas where we can make recommendations around improving quality and opportunity.

Who does our research help?

We develop our research to help:

• Governments – By identifying best practice or key issues, we can provide recommendations to governments across the world.
• Businesses – By highlighting the benefits of skills education, or the issues facing businesses, we can help businesses to get the best from their employees. We can also shape our solutions to be relevant and effective in the current climate, which in turn, drives business performance.
• Training providers and tutors – By identifying best practice, we can help our training providers and tutors to deliver our products and services more effectively. And by raising issues on an international scale, we can promote the importance of vocational education, which in turn fuels learner demand.
• Learners – By identifying a need to develop our qualifications and services, we can benefit our learners in an ever-changing jobs marketplace. And by analysing attitudes towards work-based training, we can move towards increasing awareness in available opportunities.

Leadership training programme in Sri Lanka University 2014

Our research methodology

Each research project is tailored individually and follows customised methodology. As an overview, we start by looking for gaps in current research relating to the topic. This allows us to identify the most appropriate type of research organisation we need to commission. For example, we may choose to commission a literature review, a survey of individuals or businesses, or we may need to gather economic data.