Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to help university graduates secure graduate job roles.

Employment outcomes for graduates are strong and, due to demand from employers, healthy increases have been seen in recent years. In 2016/17, over 90% of UK and other EU domiciled leavers were in work or further study 6 months after graduating and, of those employed, 79% were employed in highly-skilled and professional occupations. This compares to 89% and 73%, respectively in 2012/13.

The government’s Industrial Strategy sets out a long-term plan to boost productivity by backing businesses to create good jobs and increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, industries and infrastructure. £120 million was provided to fund collaboration between businesses and universities to stimulate local innovation through the Strength in Places Fund.

The Graduate Talent Pool is a government initiative which is designed to help new and recent graduates gain real work experience. This allows employers to advertise paid internships to new and recent graduates, free of charge.

The higher education regulator, the Office for Students’ (OfS), primary aim is to ensure that higher education delivers positive outcomes for students and it has a regulatory focus to ensure that students are able to progress into employment or further study. The OfS supports graduate employment outcomes in a number of ways, including a Challenge Competition to boost local employment outcomes and the Institute of Coding which aims to boost UK digital skills and graduate outcomes.

The government has been improving the information available to students to help them make informed choices when making decisions on higher education providers and subject choice. For example, Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Frameworks, Longitudinal Education Outcomes data and the Higher Education Open Data Competition we are running, which all provide information to prospective students.