Students or Employees?

The question of whether those undertaking placement are employees or should be treated as employees was raised in a paper at the recent Political Studies Association Conference. The paper 'Masters on the Hill – The employment contract of internships' by Mary McLaughlin of Queen’s University Belfast, examines the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission bursary programme run by the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s and the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission. You might not each the same conclusion as the author, but it is a well argueld paper.

Placement Learning in Politics

The Higher Education Academy and Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) are running a one day workshop entitled New Developments in Placement Learning in Politics on 27 June 2012. The event will be held at SHU and aims to open up the discussion around the experiences of setting up politics placements and to share in areas of good practice. An anticipated output from the event is the development of an on-line support network, hosted by SHU, which offers a network of contacts and examples of good practice that can be used by colleagues across the country interested in learning more about the setting up and running of effective politics placement opportunities. Click here for further details.

Pedagogy for employability

The Higher Education Academy have just published a new report Pedagogy for employability written by Ann Pegg, Jeff Waldock, Sonia Hendy-Isaac and Ruth Lawton. It contains a lots of material and case studies that are relevant to the social sciences. Well worth reading.