To mark 15 years of empowering individuals with essential skills, we asked for the perspectives from some of our longest-standing team members who have helped shape our journey in our strands of education, impact organisations and employment, alongside our 900 partners. 

In this blog we’ll hear the experiences, milestones, and reflections of:

• Robert Craig, COO, 8 years with Skills Builder
• Maryam Darby, Director of Impact Organisations, 10 years with Skills Builder
• Emma Reay, Head of Employer Programmes, 6 years with Skills Builder
• Evelyn Haywood, Director of Education, 8 years with Skills Builder
• Tom Varley, Impact Organisations Manager, 7.5 years with Skills Builder. 

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Let’s dive into the transformative projects, industry observations, and personal insights.

The evolution of Skills Builder

Over the course of 15 years, Skills Builder Partnership has evolved and transformed based on feedback and wider contextual and societal changes.

“In 2018, Tom and I started developing Enabling Enterprise’s next 3 year strategy – there were two big barriers to achieving our vision that one day everyone builds the essential skills to succeed: 1 - There was no shared language or way of building essential skills with rigour, and 2 -  We couldn’t achieve systemic change without working across the whole system - not just in education. That led us to becoming the Skills Builder Partnership, with over 900 organisations across education, impact and employment partnering with us to deliver systemic change.” - Robert Craig.

Adaptation has been key to reaching millions of individuals through the different, yet crucially linked strands of the Partnership - in education, impact, and employment. 

“The incredible thing has been seeing the Partnership’s reach grow - made possible by the Skills Builder Partnership itself. By creating a capacity building support model, organisations are able to develop their beneficiaries’ essential skills. One of the proudest moments was in 2021-22, when Impact Organisation partners reached over 2 million individuals with meaningful opportunities to build essential skills.” - Maryam Darby. 

In education, the model also shifted to empowering others to deliver meaningful opportunities.

“In 2019 we came together as a whole team to reflect on our education strategy. At that point, lots of the impact had been delivered by our fabulous team of former teachers who would roll around the country with matching backpacks working directly with students in classrooms. We came to the conclusion that we needed to work much more effectively with the existing leadership teams and classroom teachers so they were better able to provide opportunities for learners to build their essential skills – even when we weren’t there.” - Evelyn Haywood.

This shift resulted in the creation of Skills Builder’s flagship education programme - the Accelerator, which brings school and college leaders together to develop manageable, robust strategies, and puts resources in the hands of teachers and students. This has reached 600 schools and colleges across the UK and a further 50 around the world.  

When Tom Varley, Impact Organisations Manager joined Skills Builder nearly eight years ago, the main focus was in mainstream schools. 

“For everyone to build the essential skills to succeed, we needed to ensure our programmes were accessible and inclusive for all learners, including those with additional needs and furthest from education. I started working with specialist and Alternative Provision settings and developed the Expanded Universal Framework, drawing on the insight, expertise and lived experiences of a range of partners and inclusive voices.” reflected Tom Varley.

Expansion into other realms didn’t stop there, as Emma Reay, now Head of Employer Programmes, describes the project that extended the Skills Builder approach beyond primary and secondary. 

“Leading the project, I investigated how the Framework and our approach could be extended to Further and Higher Education settings. Through this project, it became evident to all of us that yes, the essential skills are crucial to those in colleges and universities – but that we needed to do more to ensure their development continued into work. So we evolved to include employers and how incorporating the essential skills into their own approaches to recruitment, staff development and outreach could benefit their own business practices as well as individuals interacting with them.” - Emma Reay. 

The big shifts

Over the past 15 years, there have been some notable shifts when it comes to the Partnership and essential skills. There has been increasing recognition and emphasis on essential skills in various sectors, and an increase in demand for these skills – and a notion of moving from the why to the how. 

“We spent many years building the case that essential skills drive life outcomes and can be taught. From the wide range of stakeholders I have the pleasure of speaking to, it’s clear that across sectors people are clear essential skills should be built - now the interest is in our solutions and evidence of how to build essential skills.” explains Robert Craig. 

“There really now is a shared acceptance about essential skills, their prioritisation, and that the Universal Framework is THE framework. It feels like the penny has dropped and now we can build on the progress made, work towards ensuring the opportunities for developing essential skills are effective in making a real difference to someone’s future.” agrees Maryam Darby 

A notable shift in the external environment is that of change and technology, reflects Emma Reay, “With the speed of technological advancements and the rise of automation, technical skills are becoming outdated at a faster rate than we have previously seen. Many employers recognise that essential skills are a reliable way to recruit to roles that may change over the coming years; hiring people who can adapt and approach challenges and change with a positive attitude.” 

In education and capacity building, the focus also seems to be shifting to a more holistic view, with the understanding of a good education evolving, as Evelyn Haywood explains. 

“There is a growing consensus that one outcome of a good education is to support people to live happy, fulfilled lives. This means providing a rich knowledge base as well as plenty of opportunities to build subject-specific and essential, transferable skills. These things needn’t be at odds with one another and I continue to be inspired by the school and college leaders who are delivering this every day.” 

Tom Varley also notes the gear change in organisations’ focus on others, to themselves and others. “The change from building skills in others to the desire from organisations to build the essential skills of their team, as well as their participants, has meant they are able to reflect upon their own lifelong journey of skill development and share this meaningfully. The best teaching comes from a place of knowledge and experience, which is why it’s so important for practitioners to become experts through their own application.” 

Looking ahead

Skills Builder’s mission is to ensure that one day everyone will build the essential skills to succeed, and this has been supported over the last 15 years through the Universal Framework, diverse tools, resources and products, surrounded by a catalogue of best practice from across incredibly varied contexts. The essence of what’s next is founded in a sense of pride in the Partnership and leveraging what we have learned along the way. The team is filled with excitement and anticipation as the momentum for change continues to intensify, so here are their messages:

“We’re excited to see how organisations, employers and educators can now leverage these foundations and build up their impact, one skill step at a time." - Maryam

“More people recognise and take action towards our mission each year and I feel the momentum for change increasing as time goes by. We need to keep pushing forward because what we’re doing is vitally important." - Emma Reay.

"Meaningful systemic change typically takes 20 to 30 years. Some things will change over that time, but what stays constant is the need for a shared approach so that we are all more than the sum of our parts.” - Robert Craig. 

“Building essential skills doesn’t just happen in classrooms and is not a problem for teachers to solve alone. Through a partnership of third-sector organisations, educators, employers - using a shared language and common approach - we can chip away at this together and help learners make meaningful progress." -Evelyn Haywood. 

"We’ve identified the need for essential skills, we understand the importance of a shared language and common approach to building these, so let’s build on this collective movement to achieve something truly impactful." - Tom Varley. 

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If you want to be part of the change, get in touch with us – we’d love to meet you.