Hans van der Loo, Vice President, European Union Liaison at Shell International, will join Prof. Hugh Lauder, editor of the Journal of Education and Work, as keynote speaker at the Research Conference, The Point of Partnership: Understanding Employer Engagement in Education. Tickets are still available for the Conference, which will be held at the University of Warwick, Friday 15 October 2010.
Hans will speak on talent as a strategic resource, and the urgent need for employers to work with governments, schools, colleges and universities to secure Europe’s future prosperity.
Over recent years, with his colleagues in the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), Hans has played an influential role in strengthening the evidence base on strategic skills shortages in Europe, particularly in the STEM subjects, and the importance of business-schools links as a means of securing the human resource essential to Europe’s future prosperity.
The work of the ERT has driven the commitment in the EU’s recently adopted Europe 2020 Strategy to provide active encouragement to member states to support closer working between schools and employers. The ERT proposal for a European Co-ordinating Body to help co-ordinate, leverage and build upon school-business partnerships across Europe has been adopted by the EU and the Body is due to launch in January 2011.