Features: March news

A round up of some of the news affecting students over the last month.

Save the children

The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) has announced a new scheme aimed at encouraging graduates into social work. The Step Up to Social Work campaign will have places for 200 graduates with a minimum 2:1 degree, offering at least £15,000 to retrain as children’s social workers. Successful applicants will receive employer-based training leading to a Masters degree in social work, tailored to their previous experience in the field and promises professional support upon employment. The programme will be run by eight regional partnerships across the country, including Greater Merseyside and Greater Manchester, the West and East Midlands, Yorkshire, Humberside and London.

Speak the language

You can successfully order a beer on holiday but it has been revealed that speaking another language could make you more employable. A survey of employers by the National Centre for Languages found that foreign language skills came second to only IT skills in a list of preferable traits for job candidates. Almost half of the companies (43%) surveyed said that an extra language would give candidates an edge over competitors, with French (34%) being the most desirable along with German (25%) and Spanish (23%). The survey also found that less traditional languages such as Polish, Urdu and Punjabi are becoming increasingly attractive to employers as they seek to widen their community base.

Sports drive

Sport England has launched a £10m drive to get university students doing sport after a survey showed that undergraduates have gained weight and are spending more time in the pub. A study commissioned by the funding provider suggested that fewer than three in ten play sport regularly. And according to the survey, nearly one fifth - 18% - of the 1,005 students polled admitted dedicating less than one hour to sport each week, while more than a quarter - 26% - said they spent up to ten hours in the pub. Meanwhile, nearly half of graduates - 47% - said they put on weight after starting university, with more than a third gaining up to a stone. Sport England aims to reverse these trends by creating opportunities for 72% of graduates who said they would like to spend more time on the pitches.

Get applying

It seems that competition for jobs is still on the increase after a recent Graduate Prospects poll revealed the number of applications that respondents had sent out for jobs. 35% of respondents had sent out over a staggering 50 applications for their graduate job, compared to 26% at the same time last year