Category: Skills

  • For a stronger, fairer Wales HE belongs in every manifesto

    For a stronger, fairer Wales HE belongs in every manifesto

    Wales stands on the cusp of significant political change. With an expanded Welsh Parliament and revised voting system, the 2026 Senedd election will mark a new chapter in Welsh democracy.

    May’s election will also be the first where 16- and 17-year-olds can cast their vote. This is a generation whose recent experience of education, and their future university and career aspirations, could be central to the choices they make at the ballot box.

    For those of us working in higher education, these changes present both a challenge and an opportunity. The new proportional voting system will likely result in a more diverse Senedd that will require greater collaboration across parties in order to be effective. For Universities Wales, this means we must continue to engage constructively with all political groups, building consensus around the vital role universities play in shaping a stronger Wales.

    A larger Senedd also means expanded committees and greater capacity for policy scrutiny. This is a welcome development that offers more space for detailed debate on the issues that matter, from economic growth and skills, to research, innovation, and community wellbeing. It also means more elected representatives who can champion higher education.

    Against this context, Universities Wales has launched a manifesto that sets out a clear vision for the future. It is a vision rooted in national renewal; one that sees universities as the essential infrastructure needed for Wales to thrive. Our message is simple: when universities succeed, Wales succeeds.

    Building jobs and skills

    In an age of rapid economic and technological change, Wales’ economy demands a flexible and highly skilled workforce. With Wales estimated to need 400,000 more graduates by 2035, universities will be central to supporting the next Welsh Government in meeting future economic needs and building a more skilled and prosperous nation.

    However, delivering on this ambition will require greater recognition of the role universities already play in delivering skills – including through the degree apprenticeships system – alongside a renewed focus on financial sustainability.

    A sustainable university sector is key to unlocking investment, productivity, and growth across Wales. Given recent challenges, an independent review of university funding and student support will be an essential step in ensuring universities can continue to deliver for Wales, now and into the future.

    Driving opportunity

    Wales’ future prosperity depends on our ability to nurture talent and equip people with the skills to thrive in a fast-moving world. Graduates are the backbone of our economy and the drivers of our future success. Put simply, there will be no growth without graduates.

    However, in Wales, we are seeing a worrying decline in the percentage of 18-year-olds choosing to go to university.

    We cannot afford to keep recycling old arguments about the value of a university education. We need to be stronger in demonstrating its essential role in shaping future prospects. If we fail, we risk leaving the next generation less qualified and with fewer pathways to success.

    Taking action to understand and reverse this trend through an independent commission on participation could unlock the potential of thousands of people, upskilling the economy and driving social mobility.

    Supporting research, innovation and local growth

    Equally as important is ensuring there is recognition and appropriate support for the full spectrum of work carried out by our universities, both here at home and through their international activities, which strengthen Wales’ global presence and influence.

    For example, while university research and innovation benefits people, business and public services across the nation and beyond, it is an area that continues to be significantly underfunded; pro-rata to population size, in 2024–25, the funding allocations made by HEFCW (now Medr) for R&I in Wales were £57m lower than those made by Research England for England, and £86m lower than in Scotland.

    Consequently, our manifesto pushes for greater investment in research, innovation and commercialisation within the current system of R&I funding. This means increases to QR funding, as well as further investment through the Research Wales Innovation Fund. This will be crucial to unlocking productivity and growth across all parts of Wales.

    We are also calling for greater support for the important work universities do within their communities to drive economic growth, attract investment, support public services, and shape the places where people live, work and thrive.

    The cliff-edge of funding caused by the loss of EU Structural Funds – which Wales particularly benefitted from – and the inadequacy of replacement funding, has had a detrimental impact on universities’ activity in this area. This is why long-term regional investment funding, channelled through the Welsh government, will be vital to supporting universities’ roles as anchor institutions, and encouraging private co-investment.

    Wales’ national renewal

    These priorities are not partisan. Every political party wants to see a thriving, prosperous Wales – and that vision depends on a strong, resilient and effective university sector. We know that the next Welsh government, whatever its composition, will face tough choices. But investing in universities is not a luxury, it is a strategic necessity that strengthens our economy, builds resilience, and transforms lives.

    As chair of Universities Wales, I believe our sector stands ready to play a central role in Wales’ future. The political system may be shifting, but our aim remains the same: to support a strong, fair, and successful Wales. This is a pivotal moment for our sector and for the nation. Now is the time to recognise the full value of Welsh universities,­ and to place them at the heart of Wales’ national renewal.

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  • A new approach to driving STEM workforce readiness

    A new approach to driving STEM workforce readiness

    Key points:

    STEM workforce shortages are a well-known global issue. With demand set to rise by nearly 11 percent in the next decade, today’s students are the solution. They will be the ones to make the next big discoveries, solve the next great challenges, and make the world a better place.

    Unfortunately, many students don’t see themselves as part of that picture.

    When students struggle in math and science, many come to believe they simply aren’t “STEM people.” While it’s common to hear this phrase in the classroom, a perceived inability in STEM can become a gatekeeper that stops students from pursuing STEM careers and alters the entire trajectory of their lives. Because of this, educators must confront negative STEM identities head on.

    One promising approach is to teach decision-making and critical thinking directly within STEM classrooms, equipping students with the durable skills essential for future careers and the mindset that they can decide on a STEM career for themselves.

    Teaching decision-making

    Many educators assume this strategy requires a full curriculum overhaul. Rather, decision-making can be taught by weaving decision science theories and concepts into existing lesson plans. This teaching and learning of skillful judgment formation and decision-making is called Decision Education. 

    There are four main learning domains of Decision Education as outlined in the Decision Education K-12 Learning Standards: thinking probabilistically, valuing and applying rationality, recognizing and resisting cognitive biases, and structuring decisions. Taken together, these skills, among other things, help students gather and assess information, consider different perspectives, evaluate risks and apply knowledge in real-world scenarios. 

    The intersection of Decision Education and STEM

    Decision Education touches on many of the core skills that STEM requires, such as applying a scientific mindset, collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking. This approach opens new pathways for students to engage with STEM in ways that align with their interests, strengths, and learning styles.

    Decision Education hones the durable skills students need to succeed both in and out of the STEM classroom. For example, “weight-and-rate” tables can help high school students evaluate college decisions by comparing elements like tuition, academic programs, and distance from home. While the content in this exercise is personalized and practical for each student, it’s grounded in analytical thinking, helping them learn to follow a structured decision process, think probabilistically, recognize cognitive biases, and apply rational reasoning.

    These same decision-making skills mirror the core practices of STEM. Math, science, and engineering require students to weigh variables, assess risk, and model potential outcomes. While those concepts may feel abstract within the context of STEM, applying them to real-life choices helps students see these skills as powerful tools for navigating uncertainty in their daily lives.

    Decision Education also strengthens cognitive flexibility, helping students recognize biases, question assumptions, and consider different perspectives. Building these habits is crucial for scientific thinking, where testing hypotheses, evaluating evidence objectively, and revising conclusions based on new data are all part of the process. The scientific method itself applies several core Decision Education concepts.

    As students build critical thinking and collaboration skills, they also deepen their self-awareness, which can be transformative for those who do not see themselves as “STEM people.” For example, a student drawn to literacy might find it helpful to reimagine math and science as languages built on patterns, symbols, and structured communication. By connecting STEM to existing strengths, educators can help reshape perceptions and unlock potential.

    Adopting new strategies

    As educators seek to develop or enhance STEM education and cultures in their schools, districts and administrators must consider teacher training and support.

    High-quality professional development programs are an effective way to help teachers hone the durable skills they aim to cultivate in their students. Effective training also creates space for educators to reflect on how unconscious biases might shape their perceptions of who belongs in advanced STEM coursework. Addressing these patterns allows teachers to see students more clearly, strengthen empathy, and create deeper connections in the classroom.

    When educators come together to make STEM more engaging and accessible, they do more than teach content: they rewrite the narrative about who can succeed in STEM. By integrating Decision Education as a skill-building bridge between STEM and students’ everyday lives, educators can foster confidence, curiosity, and a sense of belonging, which helps learners build their own STEM identity, keeping them invested and motivated to learn. While not every student will ultimately pursue a career in STEM, they can leave the classroom with stronger critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills that will serve them for life.

    Creating that kind of learning environment takes intention, shared commitment, and a belief that every student deserves meaningful access to and engagement with STEM. But when the opportunity arises, the right decision is clear–and every school has the power to make it.

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  • Could the Lifelong Learning Entitlement usher in a new era of skills-based curriculum?

    Could the Lifelong Learning Entitlement usher in a new era of skills-based curriculum?

    As it stands the Lifelong Learning Entitlement mostly represents a reorganisation of higher education funding and systems for quite a lot of short term operational pain and very little payoff.

    But for institutions prepared to play the long game, it could represent a real shift in how higher education is configured and how it integrates with the labour market.

    That doesn’t just mean taking existing courses that were designed for three years of intensive study and breaking them up into constituent parts – though in some cases the ability to do that could offer a lifeline for students needing to earn before they can learn. The larger prize on offer is courses that are actively designed for the contemporary labour market, in which the building blocks of the curriculum are skills and work-related competences, rather than academic knowledge.

    Let’s acknowledge from the outset the false dichotomy – knowledge requires skills to acquire and apply it, and skills require a structured context of knowledge to be meaningful and applicable. But the “skills-based curriculum” is gaining traction around the world for a reason: primarily to address a perceived demand among students and employers for learning that is practical and applied, and that prepares students to succeed in the contemporary labour market, which requires a complex mix of technical and interpersonal skills. It promises more than the embedding of in-demand skills into a traditional academic curriculum; skills-based curriculum centres work-based skills as the primary learning outcome.

    Opportunities and risks

    One corollary is that the learning itself becomes more hands-on, project-based, active, and collaborative, in order to foster those skills. Students are very clear from the outset what they are learning to do and what the workplace application will be. As some employers turn to skills-based hiring practices, graduates can readily match their experience to employers’ expectations and demonstrate, with evidence, their competences, reducing the need for a long tail of additional experience to supplement the degree certificate in the name of “employability.”.The focus on authentic learning environments and assessments also goes some way towards AI-proofing the curriculum: AI can be deployed authentically in workplace-relevant ways, not used as a shortcut to evidencing thought.

    This all sounds fantastic and straightforward, even hyper-efficient. The relevance to the LLE’s intention of a more flexible, stackable HE model lies both in the notional desirability of education oriented towards work and employment, and in the efficiency and transparency of the relationship between skills developed through education, and work.

    But there are risks, too, for both providers and students. In the absence of any kind of agreed national (or global) taxonomy of skills, that could allow for a body of practice to develop around the pedagogies and environments that demonstrably allow students to develop them, any provider may claim to offer something “skills-based” with little in the way of evidence or robust quality assurance. In an open market, students may be drawn in by the promise of work-readiness, only to discover that their learning adds up to very little. Skills England has in the last few weeks published a new UK standard skills classification that addresses the first problem; the second remains open for solutions.

    The market for such provision in the UK remains untested; the current premise of the LLE rests on the assumption that existing programmes can be disaggregated meaningfully into modules that simultaneously offer something of value as a short course of study, while also contributing towards a larger qualification. While this may be true in some cases, it certainly will not readily apply to all. Introducing skills as a core outcome, while it may work quite well for a module or short course, opens up the question of which aggregated sets of skills can be said to be meaningful in a journey towards a substantive qualification. This is a significant challenge for higher education as it is currently configured, going far beyond the merely functional and operational, touching on the core purposes and processes of higher education and the need to manage carefully the consequences of bringing “skills” to the forefront of higher education pedagogy.

    More prosaically, all this active, authentic learning doesn’t come cheap, and it requires a strong relationship with employers to deliver, raising questions about whether it is possible to develop a high-quality skills-based offer at scale. And that’s before you start questioning what the regulatory implications might be.

    These risks are only risks, not insuperable obstacles – UK HE providers, such as the London Interdisciplinary School, have adopted a “skills first” model of higher education without incident. While appetite within the sector to develop a more skills-focused offer is variable, there are institutions – such as Kingston University – that have developed an explicitly skills-focused element to complement existing programmes, and others that are interested in the potential for reconfiguring or extending their offer around skills, especially in light of the creation of Skills England and the prospect of a more systematic approach to meeting national skills needs.

    What needs to be true

    But for this model to become more widely embedded across higher education providers, and to realise the potential of the LLE to facilitate innovation in curriculum content as well as delivery, some things that are not currently true will need to become so. At the Festival of Higher Education, together with Ellucian colleagues, we hosted a private round table discussion exploring what a student journey through a more skills-based, “stackable” offer might need to look like.

    Not everything needs to be done collaboratively all the time, but there are moments in which there can be greater strategic advantage in collective innovation than in being the first mover, and significant higher education innovation could be one of them. Working collectively creates greater security both for institutions and students that the offer is well thought through and robustly quality assured, and that it will be legible to prospective students seeking to explore their choices, and have credibility in the labour market. Pooling risks in this way could help to reduce the stakes in making the decision to roll out a novel kind of provision, and potentially allow for some sharing of start-up costs.

    One area that is lacking is better market intelligence – the assumption that there is a sustainable demand for shorter and stackable higher education courses remains unproven, and some investment in exploring the nature of that demand would help institutions to tailor their offer more effectively rather than spinning up provision that is at high risk of failure either because it does not recruit or because it does not adequately meet the needs of the people who are attracted to it on principle.

    In the domain of core learning and teaching there is a need for exploration of the pedagogic frameworks and approaches that can support a high-quality and academically robust skills-based offer. Some degree of consistency in approach to building pathways through programmes designed around skills could offer an alternative to reliance on credit as the currency that notionally allows for portability between providers and in practice is very hard to implement. Retaining student choice and the possibility of personalisation is typically important to students and providers alike, so there is a flexibility imperative there that it would be hard to tackle as an individual provider.

    Accessing this type of higher education, in this way, opens up the question of reimagining the “student experience” and the underpinning systems that can enable institutions to manage it. Students will need clarity about access to work – through placement, internships or joint provision with employers – the relationship between work, learning and skills development, and ultimately who is responsible for their experience. Access to services will need to be tailored to the student, and both students and providers will need to accurately keep track of modules completed, and skills acquired, and when.

    Curriculum management systems will need to allow students to chart their way through a particular pathway and register for modules, while incorporating guardrails to avoid students choosing pathways that add up to, in the words of one attendee, a “smorgasbord of nonsense.” Support for students in mapping or curating their chosen pathways will need to be built in from their very first module, and they would need to be able to request and access a “transcript” that details their skills at the point of completion of any module.

    Skills-based curriculum needn’t be stackable and stackable higher education needn’t be skills-based, but there is clear potential for synergies between the two. Just as skills-based curriculum is unlikely to replace traditional knowledge-based curriculum wholesale, modular study is unlikely to replace the full-time experience. That doesn’t rule out the possibility of significant change though.

    Opinion is divided as to whether the LLE will enable higher education growth through innovation and access to new demand, function to create some ease and flex in a system that will enhance access to those who find engaging with the current system a struggle, or neither (or something else as-yet-unanticipated). But as higher education institutions consider the future, growth and access seem like the right targets to be aiming for. Skills-based curriculum, if developed strategically and thoughtfully, avoiding “innovation theatre,” could be helpful in both cases.

    This article is published in association with Ellucian. Take a glimpse at the technology supporting the future of lifelong learning here.

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  • When the clock ticks

    When the clock ticks

    I always respond the same: Give me a deadline you feel you can comfortably meet and then I can put it on our publishing calendar. What I don’t want is for the person to give me an early date and then not be able to meet it.

    So, how does a reporter writing a story for News Decoder come up with that deadline? It comes down to “doability”. That means what it says: what you can do, what is feasible. In determining doability, it helps to look at the opposite: Something that isn’t doable.

    Some things are difficult.

    What makes something not doable? The idea for the story is great, but realistically you won’t be able to interview anyone for it. Wouldn’t it be great to do a story on Russian hackers? But do you know any Russian hackers or anyone who knows Russian hackers? What about a story on the wealthy people giving money to political campaigns? Again, do you know anyone or can you realistically reach anyone who would give you information about that?

    In assessing the doability of a story, the first question to ask, then, is where your information will come from. You might not need to know key sources personally, but you need a way to be able to reach them and a reason to feel confident that they will talk to you.

    The second criteria is your financial wherewithal. To find the information, will you need to travel to get it? Do you have the money and time to do that?

    Third, if the subject deals with an uncomfortable subject — sexual assault, race, abortion, religion or suicide, for example — do you have the emotional resolve to be able to ask people difficult questions about their experiences? Not everyone can do that. You need to be honest with yourself about your willingness to tackle such topics.

    Last, what other responsibilities do you have that might interfere? How much time do you have to work on the story? If you have classes to attend or a job, will you only have a few hours here and there? That needs to be part of your calculation on how long it will take you to do the story.

    Many editors want to see these criteria explained when you pitch the story. They want to know that you have a solid plan for getting the information you need and the interviews to humanize the story. They want to know that you also have the wherewithal to do it.

    Be conservative. That means never overpromise. If you think it will take 20 hours to do the story, allow for 30. If you think you will need to spend $100 on travel costs, budget twice that. If you think you can turn in a story by Friday, promise it for the following Wednesday.

    No reporter was ever fired for turning in a solid story early. But if you want more story assignments you need to always, always turn them in when you promise them.

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why are deadlines so important in journalism?

    2. What is one piece of advice the author provides for meeting deadlines?

    3. Did you ever have a deadline that was difficult to meet? How did you handle it?

     

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  • Skills England has a new way to talk about skills, and the sector needs to listen

    Skills England has a new way to talk about skills, and the sector needs to listen

    Although on one level tertiary education policy has never been more concerned with skills, we’ve never really had a proper understanding of what skills actually are or how they fit together with either jobs or courses.

    While – as a select and very well-informed group of attendees at The Festival of Higher Education were delighted to learn – there are any number of conceptualisations of what a skill (or a group of skills) might be, matching skills needs to jobs or to courses has never been easy to do in a reliable way.

    To be a bit less abstract, if we want anyone to train our future workforce we need to know what we want them to be trained in. And, not only do we not know that because we can’t predict the future – we also don’t know that because we simply do not have the vocabulary or frameworks of understanding we need to pose the right questions. Employers and industries cannot talk to course providers and prospective employees about this stuff because each of these groups has spoken a different language.

    Until today!

    Into this ontological hellscape comes Skills England. The release of the UK Standard Skills Classification (UK-SSC) – alongside a wonderfully whizzy UK Skills Explorer tool – is, in a quiet way, the most significant thing to happen to the skills landscape in a generation: not least because, for the first time we are able to see it.

    Before this, the skills landscape was, (at best) uneven. SOC codes helped us understand occupational requirements for jobs, SIC codes helped us understand the kind of work that goes on in particular industries, and HECoS codes gave us an understanding of what areas particular courses of study cover. All of this was useful, but none of it really linked together and – as you’ve probably spotted – none of it talked about actual skills.

    So what is a “skill”? Well, it might be “a capability enabling the competent performance of a job-related activity”: an occupational skill. Or it could be a more generic competence, “a fundamental ability that contributes to the capability to carry out tasks associated with a specific job”: a core skill.

    Skills England has identified 3,343 occupational skills (within 22 domains, 106 areas, and 606 groups). Occupational skills combine with knowledge (4,926 of these are defined) and core skills (just 13) to give someone the capability to do one or more of 21,963 identified occupational tasks.

    UK-SSC levels diagram

    So what?

    The existence of these definitions should make it a lot easier to translate employer and industry needs, into opportunities that strategic government support, and an offer of courses that satisfies these needs.

    Let’s give an example. Imagine the government decides that any future transition away from carbon-based power requires batteries and electrical components, and notices that we have quite a lot of the rare-earth metals and other minerals that we need to make these somewhere under the ground in the UK. We need to get them out, and we need to train the people that can do that. And we currently only have one school of mining with a little over a hundred students.

    Because we can map the UK-SSC to Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes, we can very easily run up a list of the key skills we need to train people in.

    [Full screen]

    That way, when we get to specifying what the new mining schools we are going to open actually need to teach, and we get to working with industry to decide what skills they need to do all this mining we have an agreed list. A starting point, sure, but one that saves a lot of time.

    You will note that this is not just training people how to dig stuff up. There are research jobs, planning jobs, management jobs, and a fair few design jobs that need to be done. The bar chart aspect here gives us an indication as to how important each skill is to employers in this industry.

    From specification to commission

    So if we know what skills we need, how do we get people training in them? Or do we have people training in them already?

    UK-SSC also maps to HECoS codes, which are the language we use in higher education to think about subject areas. So, to continue our example, let’s think about analysing mineral deposits – helping us figure out where to start digging holes.

    “Analyse mineral deposits (S.0091)” is within the “researching & analysing” domain, and the “conducting scientific surveys and research” area. And we can use one of the mappings developed by Skills England to check out whether we have any courses in related subjects currently being offered in the UK higher education sector that might help.

    I’m sorry to say I’ve been messing around with the data behind Discover Uni again. This maps individual courses to HECoS codes – so it lets us see how many courses are in subject areas linked to the skill we are interested in.

    [Full screen]

    Setting the filters appropriately and scrolling down we can see that we are not well-served with educational opportunities in this space. There are 19 subject areas associated with this skill, and only a few have courses that are being tagged with them. Notably there are 14 courses in environmental geosciences, 8 in geology, and 3 in archeological sciences. Nobody (not even the Camborne School of Mines!) is tagging themselves with the specific engineering-related disciplines of minerals processing or quarrying.

    This neatly demonstrates that a linking vocabulary can only take us too far if subject coding (or any other kind of data collection) is done in a less-than-complete way. Using this very basic desk analysis we can see that there is probably a case for more specialist mining provision – and based on that we can suggest that there may be a cause for government investment. But it could equally demonstrate that tagging courses with HECoS code to power a course comparison website that hardly anyone looks at is not a way of generating a comprehensive picture of what is on offer.

    And this is just a starting point. We can drill down from these occupational skills into job tasks, knowledge concepts, and core skills from here – all of which would help us specify what we need to train people to do in detail fine enough to design and run a suitable course for them.

    So how has this been done?

    If you are imagining a bunch of very diligent and smart people at Skills England and the University of Warwick taking a bunch of pre-existing information and pulling together this vocabulary you are probably most of the way there. Starting from six existing sources a combination of expert input and large language models refined and deduplicated entries within:

    • A list of skills generated by (Skills England predecessor) the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education
    • A list developed by the the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services
    • A list from the National Careers Service
    • A list from the Workforce Foresighting Hub in Innovate UK
    • And two international comparators – the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications, and Occupations (ESCO) level 4 skills, and the (US based) O*NET detailed work activities.

    A similar approach generated and tested all of the mappings and hierarchies that have been made available to download and play with.

    And core skills?

    As above there are just 13 of these, but these are assigned levels of proficiency in language that feels a lot like grade descriptors (note, these are not FHEQ levels but I bet somebody, somewhere, is thinking about a mapping).

    [Full screen]

    Each of these core skills also maps, to a greater or lesser extent, to each of the occupational skills – so our old friend “Analyse mineral deposits (S.0091)” requires level 4 “learning and investigating”, level 3 “planning and organising”, and level 2 “listening”.

    You can’t help but think that forward-looking course leaders will be incorporating these definitions into their learning outcomes in the years to come. Proficiency levels may also be coming to the occupational skills definitions, and there’s even an idea of creating basic curricula for benchmarking and general use.

    Skills for the future

    There’s an old XKCD cartoon about standards that has become a meme – and it highlights that just because someone has combined everyone’s needs into a single standard there is nothing to say anyone will actually use that one rather than whatever language they’ve been speaking for years.

    The UK-SSC attempts to avoid this in two ways. Firstly it maps to other vocabularies that people are already using in linked areas, and does so by design. And secondly it bears the imprinteur of the government, suggesting that at least one influential body will be using it every time it talks about skills.

    And there’s another aspect that helps drive adoption. It will iterate – based on job vacancy data, workforce foresight, feedback from employers, even via public community forums (Stack Exchange, Discord!). And the links to other vocabularies will iterate too. The plan is that this will happen on a five year cycle, but with a first update next year.

    Make no mistake, this is a major intervention in the skills landscape – and it has been done diligently and thoughtfully. If your job involves anything from designing courses to working with employers and local skills improvement plans, if you are a professional body, or working on subject benchmark statements, you need to get on board.

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  • Students must intentionally develop durable skills to thrive in an AI-dominated world

    Students must intentionally develop durable skills to thrive in an AI-dominated world

    Key points:

    As AI increasingly automates technical tasks across industries, students’ long-term career success will rely less on technical skills alone and more on durable skills or professional skills, often referred to as soft skills. These include empathy, resilience, collaboration, and ethical reasoning–skills that machines can’t replicate.

    This critical need is outlined in Future-Proofing Students: Professional Skills in the Age of AI, a new report from Acuity Insights. Drawing on a broad body of academic and market research, the report provides an analysis of how institutions can better prepare students with the professional skills most critical in an AI-driven world.

    Key findings from the report:

    • 75 percent of long-term job success is attributed to professional skills, not technical expertise.
    • Over 25 percent of executives say they won’t hire recent graduates due to lack of durable skills.
    • COVID-19 disrupted professional skill development, leaving many students underprepared for collaboration, communication, and professional norms.
    • Eight essential durable skills must be intentionally developed for students to thrive in an AI-driven workplace.

    “Technical skills may open the door, but it’s human skills like empathy and resilience that endure over time and lead to a fruitful and rewarding career,” says Matt Holland, CEO at Acuity Insights. “As AI reshapes the workforce, it has become critical for higher education to take the lead in preparing students with these skills that will define their long-term success.”

    The eight critical durable skills include:

    • Empathy
    • Teamwork
    • Communication
    • Motivation
    • Resilience
    • Ethical reasoning
    • Problem solving
    • Self-awareness

    These competencies don’t expire with technology–they grow stronger over time, helping graduates adapt, lead, and thrive in an AI-driven world.

    The report also outlines practical strategies for institutions, including assessing non-academic skills at admissions using Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs), and shares recommendations on embedding professional skills development throughout curricula and forming partnerships that bridge AI literacy with interpersonal and ethical reasoning.

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  • Labour takes steps to bring higher education and local skills closer together

    Labour takes steps to bring higher education and local skills closer together

    The post-16 white paper promised to strengthen statutory guidance on local skills improvement plans (LSIPs), including “clearer expectations on higher education providers to engage” and a move to make the plans cover skills all the way up to level 8.

    This greater roles for universities in LSIPs was gestured at in Skills England’s ministerial guidance, and even announced by Labour in opposition.

    Now, the revised guidance has been published – and the push for higher education providers to play a more central role has indeed materialised.

    This is a local shop

    LSIPs were introduced in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act under the last government as employer-owned priorities and actions around skills needs and the provision of technical education in a designated local area of England. Some 38 different plans were approved by the Secretary of State in summer 2023, with annual progress reports following – you can find them all on this page if you don’t mind navigating through some confusingly designed websites.

    That legislation also introduced mechanisms to assess how well education providers were contributing to the plans – for example, accountability agreements for further education colleges. For higher education institutions, the only mention of accountability in the old guidance was an enjoinder to make a note of activity related to LSIP priorities in strategic plans. The previous government framing around LSIPs was notably quiet on the role of higher education, as we’ve noted before – which is not to say that many HE institutions didn’t get involved, to greater or lesser extents (the progress reports linked above demonstrate this, though in a non-systematic way).

    LSIPs cover a three-year period, so a new round in summer 2026 is Labour’s big chance to reshape them in its preferred fashion. Today’s guidance is to be used for an LSIP draft submitted by the end of March, and – pending government approval – the new plans will be published in or around June next year.

    The areas covered by LSIPs, and the corresponding employer representative bodies (ERBs), have also been shifting – today we get the latest areas confirmed, now sensibly contiguous with local authority areas. An additional wrinkle that Labour announced in last year’s devolution white paper is for so-called strategic authorities (“mayoral and non-mayoral combined authorities, combined county authorities, and the Greater London Authority”) to take joint ownership of LSIPs, along with ERBs. Eventually everywhere will be in a strategic authority – one day – but today’s guidance is in many places split depending on whether the LSIP is or is not in a more devolved part of England.

    Best laid plans

    LSIPs are a complicated undertaking at the best of times – as the government puts it, they “unite employers, strategic authorities, higher education, further education and independent training providers and wider stakeholders in solving skills challenges together.” Their effectiveness in really driving change remains unproven but – in theory – they respond to calls for a skills system that is planned at a local rather than central government level (or one that is not planned at all).

    The new guidance confirms just quite how complex an endeavour putting a plan together has become. New LSIPs will need to join up with the industrial strategy and its sector plans, “as far as they relate to industries within the local area.” This will also create synergies (or cross-purposes) with the new local growth plans for mayoral authorities announced at the spending review, which focus on economic development, and the Local Get Britain Working Plans (GBWPs) which are supposed to be looking at “broader causes of economic inactivity.”

    The guidance references a need for a read-across to the clean energy jobs plan (the LSIPs legislation placed a requirement on the plans to consider the environment), but this presumably will equally apply all the other forthcoming workforce strategies – now renamed as jobs plans, keep up – that different sectors are being obliged to come up with for purposes of linking migration and skills.

    And in perhaps the most notable shift of all, the new Labour version of the LSIP is instructed to pay heed to the post-16 white paper, and specifically the new prime ministerial targets for participation in higher-level learning. This is even presented as the first bullet point in the list of what the Secretary of State will take into account in the approval process. Reading between the lines, it looks like the government will be wanting plans which are relatively bullish on the growth of provision, including – but not only – at levels 4 and 5.

    Skills England is tasked with monitoring and oversight, as well as providing copious data to inform the plans’ development.

    Get HE in

    As set out in the new guidance at least, each LSIP will function as a little microcosm of the more coherent and cooperative education and skills landscape that Labour is swinging for in its white paper vision. Whether the plans can really drive these reforms, or simply reflect their framing, is another question – but there’s similar language about asking both further and higher education providers to lean in and

    work together in support of the ambitions set out in their respective LSIP, creating a more coherent post-16 education system with better pathways and opportunities to progress from entry up to higher level skills, enabled by the Lifelong Learning Entitlement.

    As mentioned, LSIPs will now be required to run the full gamut of technical education from entry level up to level 8, having previously been limited to level 6 provision as a cut-off. Asking employers and local areas to think about postgraduate-level skills needs is a bit of a watershed moment, even if the government itself seems to have only limited appetite for much policy change, and it will be fascinating to see what comes of it.

    Perhaps it’s the paucity of much proper government support for the higher education sector in recent years which leads me to celebrate this, but the language in the guidance around higher education’s fit within local systems feels spot on, in terms of how the sector would like itself to be understood:

    Higher education providers (HEPs) are focal points for higher level technical skills, research and innovation. The differences in mission, specialisms and strategic objectives between different types of institutions mean that HEPs can add unique value to local skill systems in a variety of ways, including through industry partnerships, research-led innovation, and national and international development initiatives; as well as feeding in higher education specific intelligence, such as graduate outcomes or skills pipeline data, to complement and add to further education and employer data.

    What getting stuck in looks like

    Both HE and FE providers will be expected to play a role in LSIP governance. Core elements of the new plans will need to include details of how both types of providers have been engaged in shaping the priorities and actions, as well as identifying challenges, and set out how they will support implementation and review progress.

    The potential actions included within LSIPs are varied, but it’s anticipated that they will speak to both improving the local skills “offer” – including changes that higher and further education providers can make to better align provision with the skills needs of the area and to simplify access – and to raise awareness of existing provision, helping both employers and learners to better understand what’s available.

    On the latter, there’s a nice moment where the guidance makes a genuinely sensible suggestion:

    Where engagement between higher education providers and LSIPs has not previously taken place, ERBs (and Strategic Authorities) may find engaging with the heads of careers and employability (who tend to work on skills development and measuring skills impact) a useful starting point.

    Higher education institutions will be “expected” (more on that later) to help ERBs and local government structures help map higher technical skills needs, share information about what they currently offer, and reflect on how their provision can be more responsive. And help with evaluation, and use their subject expertise and industry links to help develop the technical skills of staff elsewhere. And employ their national and international reach to gather best practice. It’s almost as if universities are teeming hives of resource and capable people, rather than ivory towers intent on remaining aloof from their local areas.

    Plus there’s an expectation for collaboration with further education and with other higher education providers to, “where appropriate”,

    create a more strategically planned response to skills needs, leading to improved local and regional coverage and coordination.

    It all sounds very nice if it works – and it all helps to flesh out the how of the white paper’s grand but largely un-operationalised ideas.

    Who’s accountable then?

    In its promises to give universities a “seat at the table” in LSIPs, it sounded like there was the possibility of Labour introducing a degree of accountability for higher education institutions, in the same way that applies to further education colleges (both through accountability agreements with DfE, and in a growing emphasis on local skills in Ofsted inspections). Research from the Association of Colleges has previously highlighted universities’ lack of formal accountability within the LSIP system as a mild bone of contention among stakeholders.

    This hasn’t happened – as far as accountability applies to higher education institutions’ role in the plans, it will remain limited to an expectation that activity is recorded in strategic or business plans, as was previously the case. There is now also encouragement for HEIs to “publicly communicate their role in the LSIP in other ways.” What we do get much more of is an emphasis on those responsible for the plans to seek out and involve the higher education sector.

    We therefore run up against the same issues that dog Labour’s HE agenda elsewhere – there might be an attractive vision of collaboration and coherence, which all things being equal the sector would be well-disposed towards, but at a time of maximum turmoil and with incentives pointing in other directions, can it really gel? Otherwise put: is dedicating enormous resource, goodwill and strategic direction to local needs a prudent choice for institutions battling to survive, or would they be better off focusing on recruiting every single last international student they can get their hands on for the rest of the Parliament? To which we might also add that the retrenchment in higher education civic work that seems to be taking place in some areas has likely already damaged some of the required structures and led to the loss of needed expertise.

    It’s a similar story elsewhere in the system: local government structures have never been more stretched, devolution-related reforms are still in their infancy, and while employer groupings may be well-placed to say what skills they would like more of, are they really effective stewards of fiendishly complicated local projects involving multiple actors and spotty data?

    A set of 39 well thought through and carefully monitored LSIPs at the heart of a responsive ecosystem of employers, HE and FE, and local government – each with one eye on the industrial strategy, and another on an area’s own specific character – would do wonders for Labour’s education and skills agenda. But the conditions need to be in place for it to emerge, and right now it feels like quite the reach.

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  • How CTE inspires long and fulfilling careers

    How CTE inspires long and fulfilling careers

    This post originally published on iCEV’s blog, and is republished here with permission.

    A career-centered education built on real experience

    One of the most transformative aspects of Career and Technical Education is how it connects learning to real life. When students understand that what they’re learning is preparing them for long and fulfilling careers, they engage more deeply. They build confidence, competence, and the practical skills employers seek in today’s competitive economy.

    I’ve seen that transformation firsthand, both as a teacher and someone who spent two decades outside the classroom as a financial analyst working with entrepreneurs. I began teaching Agricultural Science in 1987, but stepped away for 20 years to gain real-world experience in banking and finance. When I returned to teaching, I brought those experiences with me, and they changed the way I taught.

    Financial literacy in my Ag classes was not just another chapter in the curriculum–it became a bridge between the classroom and the real world. Students were not just completing assignments; they were developing skills that would serve them for life. And they were thriving. At Rio Rico High School in Arizona, we embed financial education directly into our Ag III and Ag IV courses. Students not only gain technical knowledge but also earn the Arizona Department of Education’s Personal Finance Diploma seal. I set a clear goal: students must complete their certifications by March of their senior year. Last year, 22 students achieved a 100% pass rate.

    Those aren’t just numbers. They’re students walking into the world with credentials, confidence, and direction. That’s the kind of outcome only CTE can deliver at scale.

    This is where curriculum systems designed around authentic, career-focused content make all the difference. With the right structure and tools, educators can consistently deliver high-impact instruction that leads to meaningful, measurable outcomes.

    CTE tools that work

    Like many teachers, I had to adapt quickly when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. I transitioned to remote instruction with document cameras, media screens, and Google Classroom. That’s when I found iCEV. I started with a 30-day free trial, and thanks to the support of their team, I was up and running fast. 

    iCEV became the adjustable wrench in my toolbox: versatile, reliable, and used every single day. It gave me structure without sacrificing flexibility. Students could access content independently, track their progress, and clearly see how their learning connected to real-world careers.

    But the most powerful lesson I have learned in CTE has nothing to do with tech or platforms. It is about trust. My advice to any educator getting started with CTE? Don’t start small. Set the bar high. Trust your students. They will rise. And when they do, you’ll see how capable they truly are.

    From classroom to career: The CTE trajectory

    CTE offers something few other educational pathways can match: a direct, skills-based progression from classroom learning to career readiness. The bridge is built through internships, industry partnerships, and work-based learning: components that do more than check a box. They shape students into adaptable, resilient professionals.

    In my program, students leave with more than knowledge. They leave with confidence, credentials, and a clear vision for their future. That’s what makes CTE different. We’re not preparing students for the next test. We’re preparing them for the next chapter of their lives.

    These opportunities give students a competitive edge. They introduce them to workplace dynamics, reinforce classroom instruction, and open doors to mentorship and advancement. They make learning feel relevant and empowering.

    As explored in the broader discussion on why the world needs CTE, the long-term impact of CTE extends far beyond individual outcomes. It supports economic mobility, fills critical workforce gaps, and ensures that learners are equipped not only for their first job, but for the evolution of work across their lifetimes.

    CTE educators as champions of opportunity

    Behind every successful student story is an educator or counselor who believed in their potential and provided the right support at the right time. As CTE educators, we’re not just instructors; we are workforce architects, building pipelines from education to employment with skill and heart.

    We guide students through certifications, licenses, career clusters, and postsecondary options. We introduce students to nontraditional career opportunities that might otherwise go unnoticed, and we ensure each learner is on a path that fits their strengths and aspirations.

    To sustain this level of mentorship and innovation, educators need access to tools that align with both classroom needs and evolving industry trends. High-quality guides provide frameworks for instruction, career planning, and student engagement, allowing us to focus on what matters most: helping every student achieve their full potential.

    Local roots, national impact

    When we talk about long and fulfilling careers, we’re also talking about the bigger picture:  stronger local economies, thriving communities, and a workforce that’s built to last.

    CTE plays a vital role at every level. It prepares students for in-demand careers that support their families, power small businesses, and fill national workforce gaps. States that invest in high-quality CTE programs consistently see the return: lower dropout rates, higher postsecondary enrollment, and greater job placement success.

    But the impact goes beyond metrics. When one student earns a certification, that success ripples outward—it lifts families, grows businesses, and builds stronger communities.

    CTE isn’t just about preparing students for jobs. It’s about giving them purpose. And when we invest in that purpose, we invest in long-term progress.

    Empowering the next generation with the right tools

    Access matters. The best ideas and strategies won’t create impact unless they are available, affordable, and actionable for the educators who need them. That’s why it’s essential for schools to explore resources that can strengthen their existing programs and help them grow.

    A free trial offers schools a way to explore these solutions without risk—experiencing firsthand how career-centered education can fit into their unique context. For those seeking deeper insights, a live demo can walk teams through the full potential of a platform built to support student success from day one.

    When programs are equipped with the right tools, they can exceed minimum standards. They can transform the educational experience into a launchpad for lifelong achievement.

    CTE is more than a pathway. It is a movement driven by student passion, educator commitment, and a collective belief in the value of hard work and practical knowledge. Every certification earned, every skill mastered, and every student empowered brings us closer to a future built on long and fulfilling careers for everyone.

    For more news on career readiness, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching hub.

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  • Higher education should back a national digital skills wallet

    Higher education should back a national digital skills wallet

    Across the UK, millions of people struggle to prove what they’re capable of. From students juggling part-time work, to graduates volunteering in their communities, much of their learning sits outside formal qualifications and is effectively invisible to employers and institutions.

    That invisibility costs everyone. It holds back individuals who can’t evidence their abilities and employers who struggle to identify the right talent, and it also drags on national productivity.

    Last month the RSA and Ufi VocTech Trust published the final report of the Digital Badging Commission, From Skills to Growth: A Plan for Digital Badging in the UK. The conclusion is clear: the UK urgently needs a national digital skills wallet, linked to emerging plans for a national digital ID and built on open, interoperable standards. It would allow people to collect, store and share digital badges and credentials for their skills and capabilities that sit alongside their formal qualifications for a more holistic approach to education.

    This recommendation now aligns directly with the UK government’s post-16 education and skills white paper which commits to a digital-first, lifelong learning system and the development of a national digital identity infrastructure. The commission’s proposals are therefore timely, practical and well placed to support the government’s agenda.

    The missing infrastructure

    While individual institutions issue transcripts in pdf format, and some pioneer digital badges alongside them, there’s no shared infrastructure to make those records connected nor visible across different sectors. As education and work become increasingly digital, paper certificates should be giving way to verifiable, portable digital records, alongside digital badges and credentials.

    These are not just icons of achievement, but verified records embedded with information about who issued them, what they recognise and when they were awarded. Built on open standards, they can be issued by any organisation that follows the same open technical framework, ensuring compatibility across sectors.

    Globally, digital badges and credentials are part of richer digital profile infrastructures, including Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs) and Learning and Employment Records (LERs). CLRs capture academic, professional and co-curricular achievements, while LERs extend this to employment history, creating a portfolio of verified experience. Both can be stored in digital wallets, secure platforms that give individuals control over how and when they share their data with employers or education providers.

    Together, these systems represent a shift towards lifelong, learner-owned digital records, combining qualifications, skills and experience into one trusted framework. This is precisely the direction outlined in the government’s white paper, which calls for a more joined-up and data-driven post-16 education landscape.

    The Digital Badging Commission’s modelling shows that a trusted digital credentialing ecosystem could unlock billions in productivity across the wider economy through faster hiring and retention. But the gains go deeper than economics: visibility of skills drives inclusion. It means every learner, whatever their route, can have their capabilities recognised.

    Keeping up with global trends

    The use of digital skills wallets and LERs is accelerating worldwide. In the UK, the idea of a skills passport is not new – in 2022, the Council of Skills Advisers, chaired by David Blunkett, proposed a Learning and Skills Passport, a modular, assessment-based record built over a lifetime, linked to Individual Learning Accounts. More recently, under the industrial strategy, government confirmed that Skills England will work with industry to develop such passports.

    Across Europe, the EU’s Digital Identity Wallet is being piloted in several member states ahead of full rollout in 2026. It will let citizens store and share verified digital credentials, from qualifications to identity documents, through a secure mobile app integrated with Europass. The system aims to make skills and qualifications transferable across borders, supporting the EU’s vision for a flexible, skills-based digital economy.

    The Digital Badging Commission is calling for interoperable skills wallets that begins as an evolution of the Department for Education’s digital Education Record (which will be rolled out to all school pupils from August 2026). It will initially hold GCSEs for school-leavers but could expand to become a lifelong, portable record – potentially linking to whatever comes out of emerging plans for a national digital ID.

    Here the white paper is welcome but incomplete. It describes an “education record app” focused on qualifications and support information, yet it does not set out how essential, non-accredited learning (workplace skills, volunteering, micro-credentials) will be imported. To avoid a two-tier system, the government should seize the chance to ensure one integrated wallet – rather than a separate “skills app” – so a person’s full skillset is represented, not just formal assessments. Not only that, but individuals should be able to choose what they share, and with whom.

    This directly complements the white paper’s ambition for a unified skills and qualifications framework, ensuring that learning follows the individual, not the institution, across life and work.

    Crucially, it must adopt open standards so that every education provider can issue records that align with it, and can be exported into a shared national wallet or interoperable proprietary ones. Degree transcripts from universities would no longer be in pdf format, but living records exported to the same technical rules as other credentials. A learner could move a verified transcript directly into a skills and qualifications wallet, combine it with badges from professional training or volunteering, and share it securely with employers anywhere in the UK.

    That interoperability matters. Without it, the Education Record risks excluding lifelong learning altogether. With it, we can create a single, trusted architecture connecting higher education, workplace learning and civic participation. For universities, it means the qualifications they issue remain visible and valuable in a joined-up system.

    What higher education stands to gain

    There’s a strategic choice here. Universities can either wait until government or private platforms dictate the standards or help design them now.

    By engaging early, HEIs can enhance their reputation and competitiveness by being seen as innovators in trusted digital credentials. This will strengthen their global profile and appeal to learners and employers seeking transparent, skills-focused education. They can provide better learner outcomes by meaningfully capturing students’ broader skills, placements and co-curricular learning, improving employability and lifelong learning pathways – taking the former Higher Education Achievement Record to its natural digital conclusion, and making lifelong learning tangible, rather than rhetorical, to students. Moreover, early involvement will mean a smoother integration with existing systems (VLEs and student records), reducing future compliance costs and avoiding disruptive retrofitting when standards are mandated.

    The post-16 white paper’s call for a coherent digital skills framework reinforces this opportunity for universities to lead, not follow, in shaping the standards and technology that will define post-16 learning.

    The obvious concerns are trust, quality and cost. Without consistent quality assurance, digital credentials risk being untrusted markers of skill. That’s why the Commission also calls for a national registry for digital credential quality assurance – a registry that defines standards, metadata requirements and approved issuers.

    Quality is not the enemy of flexibility in this case; it is the enabler of trust. If universities lead in shaping these standards, they can ensure rigour and learner protection are built in from the start.

    Adopting open standards in education and digital skills systems will not necessarily be straightforward, particularly in environments where legacy systems have been modified incrementally over years. For many institutions, both large and small, modifying student information systems and integrating open standards to bring them into line will require significant overhaul of systems, as well as underpinning investment in staff training.

    However, the implementation of the LLE is requiring all institutions to explore the extent to which their student record systems are fit for purpose, and this represents a real opportunity to think broadly about what systems will be required in the future.

    A call to lead, not follow

    The RSA once helped invent the modern exam system. Today we need the same leap of imagination for the digital age. If we want an inclusive, high-trust and high-skill economy, recognition must catch up with reality.

    Universities are uniquely placed to lead this transition, rooted in evidence, trusted by learners and central to the national conversation about growth. The question is not whether digital credentials will become part of our landscape, but who will set the standards and values that shape them.

    By engaging with open standards for degree transcripts and flexing VLEs to deliver digital badges, higher education can ensure that the national digital skills wallet reflects academic quality, learner autonomy and social purpose. In the wake of the government’s post-16 white paper – and with clarity now needed on integrating non-accredited learning – the timing could not be better. It’s an opportunity to turn invisible learning into visible value.

    You can download the Digital Badging Commission’s final report, From Skills to Growth: A Plan for Digital Badging in the UK here.

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  • What is in the post-16 education and skills white paper for higher education?

    What is in the post-16 education and skills white paper for higher education?

    The government’s post-16 education and skills white paper is jointly fronted by the Department for Education, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Department for Work and Pensions – and is accordingly ambitious in scope.

    Spanning proposals to address the number of NEET young people to widening access to postgraduate study, the plans break down into three key areas: joining up skills and employment throughout the system including through Skills England and funding reform; reforms in the further education/college sector; and reforms in the higher education sector. It’s the last of these we are concerned with here.

    The headlines

    Introducing the white paper in the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson announced the critical information many have been waiting for: a commitment to increase tuition fees and maintenance loans by predicted inflation for the next two years, and to legislate to make the fee increase automatic in future.

    The white paper arrives against the backdrop of the government’s new target for two-thirds under-25 participation in higher-level learning, but that target itself is fundamentally about the stuff the government has been talking about from the beginning: tackling skills shortages to support growth; and offering more, and broader, opportunities for post-16 education and training.

    Within all of that higher education emerges as a critical “strategic asset” – but nevertheless in need of reform, summed up as follows:

    Our ambition is to have a more sustainable, more specialised and more efficient sector, better aligned with the needs of the economy.

    In practice, if the government were to have its way (and that’s a big if) the outcome would be a fair bit of sector consolidation, with a more stratified sector incorporating fewer highly research-active institutions, operating within a regional ecosystem in which different types of institutions coordinate around an education offer that remains competitive in terms of subject and qualification choice, but attentive to regional skills needs.

    What’s missing, arguably, is the heavy policy lifting to make that real. As the text of the white paper suggests:

    The changes outlined here mark the beginning of a journey. We want to continue working with the sector to consider how best we can support greater specialisation in the future.

    Critically, what is not included here is anything on the pointier end of financial sustainability ie management of institutional insolvency or a special administration regime – the working assumption is that autonomous institutions will be able to identify opportunities to innovate, whether individually or in collaboration. That may be true, but while the risks of specialisation outweigh the prospective rewards, the government can encourage all it wants, but institutions will most likely continue to recruit to the courses that they believe there is a market for.

    What there does appear to be is a generalised vote of confidence in the Office for Students (OfS) – no proposals to tear up the Higher Education and Research Act here. In fact, when the parliamentary schedule allows, OfS is set to get more powers, particularly to crack down on low quality – and will now become the regulator for all provision at level 4 and above. Critically, OfS’ definition of quality will be given teeth both in the form of permission – or otherwise – to increase fees or issue restrictions on growth in student numbers.

    All together now

    In terms of strategic ambition, there are five objectives for the sector: economic growth, a high quality experience, national capability via specific research and skills development, regional impact, and an increase in international standing. International, these translate into global standing, nationally to government goals on growth, security and skills, regionally to meeting skills needs through collaboration, and at provider level, to specialisation and efficiency.

    Providers are challenged to:

    specialise in areas of strength within a more collaborative system, with clearer roles for teaching- and research-intensive institutions with areas of specialist advantage, and stronger access and participation.

    The argument is that too many providers are trying to sustain too broad a base of offering to the same student demographics rather than focusing on their core strengths. From the outset, however, it is clarified that higher education providers are autonomous and “it is not for government to impose these changes.” So institutions will be encouraged to innovate, to specialise and to collaborate rather than obliged to, with OfS tasked with working out what might help.

    The sting in the tail, however, is that the government intends to use research funding to drive some of this differentiation in the form of a “more strategic distribution of research activity,” which essentially means concentrating research funding which will have the knock-on impact that those who lose out will be obliged to revise their business models.

    In theory this could mean greater efficiency in the research system with better cost recovery, and more sharing of grants, facilities, and equipment. The idea here is because of the close relationship between research and teaching specialisation in one will drive specialisation in the other. And, just to be sure, providers are asked to align incentives for academics for research excellence and teaching excellence and to diversify recognition for research performance to include mentoring, peer review, commercialisation activities and public engagement.

    Sustainable footing

    That commitment to inflationary fee and maintenance loan rises – baked in for the first two years, with the intent to make it automatic in the longer term via legislation when parliamentary time allows – covers all provision with the exception of classroom-based foundation years – these will stick at £5,670 through 2026–27 and 2027–28 at least.

    There’s a big caveat – future fee uplifts will be conditional on providers achieving a “higher quality threshold” via the OfS’ quality regime. This isn’t spelled out, but it is reasonable to assume given the recent consultation that this might be new TEF silver and gold.

    The long-standing debate on full cost recovery appears to be tilting in support of costs, which the paper recognises “may result in funding a lower volume of research but at a more sustainable level.” The ask for providers here is effective collaboration and shared resources (again), and a commitment to to cost grants accurately. There’s a wider interest in improving research grant cost recovery alongside this – mostly stuff we already know about (equipment funded at 80 per cent of costs, a higher capital equipment threshold, confirmation that matched funding from providers is not required for UKRI) but there’s also wider research into costs (including on the sustainability of PhD programmes) underway.

    Dual support will remain (QR funding will stay), but there will be a modification of what the government expects in return – the idea for research generally is to stick to three priorities: curiosity-driven, delivering government priorities (missions, the industrial strategy), and targeted commercialisation and scale up support. There’s more on streamlining bureaucracy, including improvements to the way the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) is used for assurance.

    A single line says the government will seek to “better understand concerns” about the Teacher’s Pension Scheme, which is used in providers formerly in local government control and where costs are rising well beyond the capacity of institutions to address them (which the government already knows).

    But again, there’s pro for the quid, in the form of expectations of higher education institutions to deliver efficiency.

    We knew that government was worried about HE governance and its general capability to deliver strategic change and sustainable operating models, and so the white paper confirms, with signals that OfS will consult on strengthening its condition of registration on governance, and endorsement of the current Committee of University Chairs governance review, which will strengthen its (voluntary) Code of Governance.

    There’s a note of thanks to the UUK Efficiency and Transformation Taskforce, endorsement of plans to develop an efficiency maturity model, and a wish to see more visibility for good collaboration practice (hats off to N8 and the Midlands Innovation partnership).

    In turn, the government will help make the Student Loans Company more efficient, foster closer relationships between OfS and UKRI on regulation and the delivery of the broader strategic aims of government, and strengthen OfS financial monitoring of the sector. OfS will be delivering a reformed regulatory framework that is focused on “driving out pockets of poor performance.”

    Access and student experience

    Much of the section on access and participation is taken up with reiterating student finance arrangement – LLE, targeted grants – but there is also a basket of other ideas and proposals, including reform to OfS’ approach to access and participation to be (even) more risk-based, consideration of patterns of PhD participation and access to postgraduate study, and notes on student accommodation, harassment, the extension of the mental health taskforce for another year with a new student support champion, and the existing funding to tackle antisemitism.

    Higher education cold spots and contextual admissions will be the main topics of conversation at a task and finish group to be chaired by University of Derby vice chancellor Kathryn Mitchell bringing together sector experts, charities, OfS, and UCAS.

    There is a recap of the details of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, with an emphasis that available provision will expand beyond the priority areas in future. As has been widely acknowledged, this removes the distinction between full and part-time study – it will be possible to study multiple courses and modules at the same time. And there is a reminder that even if you have used up your (four year full-time) allocation, there will still be money available for priority courses.

    On that, there are some indications about the relationship between the LLE and the Growth and Skills Levy – the former will allow students to draw down loans to take modular courses at level 4 or above, particularly in FE colleges, while the latter will allow employer funding for “short courses.” Curiously, the only mention of apprenticeships is in relation to a new form of short course provision dubbed “apprenticeship units” designed to tackle critical skills shortages, tacit confirmation, perhaps, that the apprenticeship model may be too unwieldy and too challenging to scale to deliver on those critical areas at the pace required.

    Finally – first announced in 2010 – there is movement on creating an Alternative Student Finance scheme for those who are unable or unwilling to participate in the main scheme (primarily those individuals who consider themselves subject to Sharia law), which will launch “as soon as possible” after the introduction of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) in January 2027.

    About growth

    The strategic priorities grant (which is the bits of OfS funding that currently include the stuff on high-cost subjects) will be reformed – as highlighted in the last grant letter to OfS, and with the groundwork on data collection achieved via the reforms to HESES.

    Those of a certain vintage will recall the ability for students to leave their degree with a certificate (L4) after year one and a diploma (L5) after year two – there’s a consultation pending on making student support for traditional (level 6) degrees conditional on doing something similar. A part of the hope here is allowing transferability between providers, though there is nothing on facilitating this kind of transfer (something that English higher education has traditionally struggled with). This comes alongside the established focus on levels 4 and 5 in higher technical qualifications (HTQs) – the twist here is that OfS will be able to bestow HTQ awarding powers in the same way it does degree awarding powers (or, cynically, foundation degree awarding powers) – with the designation process for HTQ courses becoming more flexible.

    Providers get “clearer expectations” around involvement in Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs), which will cover technical skills needs between levels 4 and 8. This will be supported by a market-monitoring function within Skills England which will spot gaps between supply and demand nationally and locally.

    There’s a restatement of some research announcements in this bit – the protection of overall funding, access to horizon europe, and the protection of curiosity-driven research (UKRI gets a strategic objective year), work with public sector research establishments, and the increase to the maximum stipend.

    On commercialisation and scale-up, some UKRI funding will pivot towards government priorities (as in the industrial strategy) and a rethink of the way innovation funding is used to drive growth. And universities are encouraged to develop civic plans that align with their strengths and priorities.

    Finally in this section we get some lines on international standing – again this is mostly restatement of stuff like the Global Talent Visa reforms, but adding a hint of a refresh to the International Education Strategy. Recruitment must be sustainable and not put providers at undue risk, and there will be tighter enforcement of visa approvals via strengthening requirements on universities.

    Quality

    Teaching quality remains a core agenda, with the paper noting that:

    Among students who found their university experience worse than they had expected, teaching quality was among the most commonly cited reasons. Improving transparency about course quality is essential.

    The government will “consider options” to increase the capacity of OfS to conduct quality investigations, with the hoped-for outcome being that it can respond more rapidly to identified risks. Again, when parliamentary time allows, OfS will gain additional powers to intervene in cases of low quality, including imposing limitations on student numbers.

    The plans consulted on last year, which would make larger franchise providers register with OfS in order to access funding, will go ahead – while OfS will prioritise franchise investigations ahead of getting strengthened statutory powers to intervene “decisively” on this issue including stronger powers of entry, and the ability to make interim sanctions. And there’s more to come on tackling abuse of the system by recruitment agents – sharpening up access to student finance, and reinforced investigative powers for OfS.

    White papers traditionally include a section on improving applicant information, and this one is no different: the government welcomes the offer rates and historic grades on UCAS, and wants to add graduate outcomes information and completion rates from Discover Uni to what is on offer there.

    The time-honoured system of external examiners – where academics from elsewhere assure the quality and standards of provision at a provider – is up for debate, with an evidence base being built on the “effectiveness or otherwise” of this approach to feed into an OfS programme of reform that will also include employer views as part of a wider look at degree awarding powers.

    And there’s a progress 8 style measure (basically something akin to learning gain) in the offing, with the government and OfS working together on this.

    Finally in this section, a section on freedom of speech on campus summarises the changes made to the measures in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, adding a note on the tension between these duties and a right not to be threatened, harassed, or intimidated.

    What happens now

    There’s a lot to digest in this white paper, with a lot of the proposals themselves requiring extensive action and further development – and we’ve not even covered the broader post-16 skills plans here, such as the new V levels. What’s missing though is a defined legislative agenda or timescale – indeed, this is not a traditional white paper in that it is not presented for public consultation at all. In that sense it is closer to what the Labour manifesto originally promised, which was a comprehensive post-16 education strategy, and it’s probably in that vein it should be read.

    With that in mind, it’s probably best to view the overall direction of travel as locked in – assuming this government can stick around long enough to realise some of its ambitions in practice. But there is still a great deal of work to be done to put flesh on the bones of these various proposals – and while some of these plans may go against the traditional sector grain, figuring out how to make them work in practice offers an opportunity to look again at what bits of higher education are critical to preserve – and what hitherto sacred cows can safely be allowed to slide into obscurity.

    Join the authors and the rest of Team Wonkhe at the Festival of Higher Education on 11-12 November in London where we’ll be digesting the government’s agenda for HE alongside a multitude of sector experts and commentators. Find out more and book your ticket here. 

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