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Graduates: Work Experience

Volume 506: debated on Tuesday 23 February 2010

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many unique visitors there have been to the (a) Graduate Talent Pool and (b) Our future, its in our hands website in each month since each was created. (307769)

The Department do not have monthly figures for the number of unique visits to the Graduate Talent Pool website. But the following information is available:

Total unique visitors between 19 April and 8 December to the Employer site were: 55,012

Total unique visitors between 30th June and 8th December to the Graduate site were: 104,403

In addition the figures for total visits to the employer and graduate sites are as follows:

Employer site

Graduate site

1-28 July

6109

29 July-l September

21291

46444

2 September-27 September

15282

44260

28 September-3 November

10305

37982

4 November-l December

9275

30334

The “Our future. Its in our hands” website is owned and managed by the Learning and Skills Council. I have asked the Chief Executive of the Learning and Skills Council to write to the hon. Member separately to provide an answer to that part of the question.

Letter from Geoff Russell, dated 12 February 2010:

The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, has asked me to respond to your Parliamentary Question 627 that asked;

“how many unique visitors there have been (a) to the Graduate Talent Pool and (b) Our future, its in our hands websites in each month since each was created.”

The following table contains web traffic information for the “In Our Hands” website, from 17 May 2009 to 14 December 2009. Unfortunately, due to the time constraints in which the response is required, further historical data cannot be obtained.

The “In Our hands” website was established in summer 2007 to serve a range of audiences interested in increasing their skill levels. The two main audiences are:

Individuals, who are targeted through marketing communications, and

Businesses, which are encouraged to make the Skills Pledge.

The purpose of the site was to act as a central repository for information relevant to the target audiences listed above. The site was promoted to individuals during key times of the year, summer and early spring, which are key enrolment times for post 16 providers. Since the integration of the Careers Advice Service with the Learning and Skills Council in 2008, the Careers Advice Service website and telephone helpline have become the main call to action in promotional materials targeting individuals.

As part of the Transformational Government strategy, this website has been identified by the Cabinet Office for convergence and closure (reference X1668).

Although the deadline for closure is March 2011, the LSC is aiming to have completed the necessary convergence work by the end of March 2010.

Information aimed at individuals has already been relocated in the Careers Advice Service site, which will subsequently become part of the Adult Advancement and Careers Service, in August 2010. Information and services for Business (i.e. Skills Pledge) will become part of the Business Link website.

Visits trend

Month

Visits

Percentage visits

January

0

0

February

0

0

March

0

0

April

0

0

May

3,837

5

June

7,895

10

July

13,768

18

August

6,727

9

September

18,068

23

October

16,044

21

November

7,902

10

December

3,738

5

Total

77,979

100.00

Notes:

Time interval (hour, day, etc.)

A one-year report displays monthly time increments. A one-quarter report displays weekly time increments. A one-month report or a one-week report displays daily time increments. A daily report displays hourly time increments. An hour-long interval marked 12:00, for example, includes all activity between 12:00 and 12:59.

Visits

Number of visits to your site during the specified time interval. A visit is a series of actions that begins when a visitor views their first page from the server, and ends when the visitor leaves the site or remains idle beyond the idle-time limit. The default idle-time limit is thirty minutes. This time limit can be changed by the system administrator.

Percentage

Percentage of visits to your site during the specified time interval compared with all visits to our site during the report period.