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Ewart Keep

Professor Emeritus, Oxford University
Collaborator, Digital Futures of Work

Professor Keep has been researching employment and skills issues for more than 35 years. He has written on lifelong learning, employers’ investment in skills, how skills policies are created and enacted, and the role of education and training within broader economic development. He has advised the UK government, is a member of its new Skills and Productivity Board, and is also board member of the Scottish Funding Council, and sits on the Scottish Government’s Strategic Labour Market Group.

Related Articles
Blog | May 10, 2023

Digitalisation’s impacts on occupations and skills – the challenge for English qualifications

Across the developed and developing world the adoption of digital technologies is having an impact on the structure of occupations and careers, and consequently on the skills needed to undertake jobs and job roles. As the Digital Futures project has revealed, these impacts vary between countries, but also between occupations

Blog | March 21, 2023

Digitalisation and English policy capacity

One of the key lessons to emerge from comparative research on national policy responses to digitalisation, automation and AI is that nations start in very different places in terms of their levels of capacity to confront these issues. Put bluntly, some countries have a stronger and more effective policy response

Publications | December 5, 2022

Working Paper 8: English approaches to digital skills policy – some reflections on current directions and developments

This paper provides a critical overview of the UK government’s strategy for addressing digital skill needs. It locates this issue against a backdrop of multiple policy challenges, including relative economic decline, flatlining productivity growth, the effects of Brexit and the issues thrown up by transition to Net Zero. One of

Blog | July 25, 2022

Why the UK government is failing to address digital skill needs

What is the UK government doing to identify and address future digital skill needs? What follows explores what is being done and points to some of the major gaps that will need filling if a comprehensive and coherent policy response is to emerge. In 2017 the Department for Digital, Culture,

Blog | March 23, 2022

The curious absence of a coherent digital skills policy in the UK

The impacts of digitalisation on skills are, at best, muted in current UK policy debates. Given the importance of digital technologies, why is this?  What follows will argue that there are two key reasons.  The first is that we have many other labour market issues to worry about and these

Publications | February 4, 2021

Working Paper 3: Initial thoughts on policy issues for the future of work

In light of the different types and orders of effects that digitalisation has on skill needs and education and training (E&T), it is paramount to note the impact of technology on pre-existing debates within education policy. Because skill demands triggered by AI and technological change more broadly, it re-ignites and