One of the primary barriers facing young people when taking the first steps in their careers is a lack of essential skills. This was a key theme that emerged from a recent meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Youth Affairs (APPG).
The meeting was chaired by MPs Jo Gideon and Mary Foy, and was attended by representatives from a range of organisations, including Skills Builder, the YMCA, the British Youth Council, Demos, The Prince's Trust, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, Engineering UK, The Learning & Work Institute, and UK Youth.
The importance of transferable skills
Transferable skills are those essential skills that can be applied to a variety of different jobs and situations. They include things like speaking, listening, problem-solving, and teamwork.
There is growing evidence and support for transferable skills as essential for success in the 21st century economy. The DofE is pushing for a National Enrichment Guarantee, where young people would receive a minimum amount of enrichment time as statutory provision. This is in line with the Tony Blair Institute's '4 Cs', where there is some overlap with the Skills Builder Universal Framework for Essential SKills.
Demos is investigating the 'double skills gap' of both technical and transferable skills and are calling for more government investment for extra-curricular activities to develop these. Demos has also done some research for the Scouts that found that young people who take part in extracurricular activities, such as Scouts, feel much more prepared for the world of work, and are gaining the skills that employers want right now.
The Essential Skills Tracker 2023 found that essential skills are more strongly associated with improved life outcomes for those with lesser prior social advantage. The research brings into sharp relief how the essential skills trap presents one of the primary barriers for young people - particularly those less advantaged - when taking the first steps in their career.
A lack of opportunity to build essential skills in education leads to lower skill levels and lower valuing of skills, they then go into lower skilled, lower paid jobs. Those jobs in turn provide fewer skills building opportunities, and they enjoy lower job and life satisfaction.
The importance of essential skills for young people
Employers recruit for skills like teamwork, creativity and problem solving and consistently report that young people lack these skills.
From an individual perspective, research shows that the individuals most likely to have had opportunities to build these skills - and who consequently go into higher skilled, higher paid jobs - tend to come from more advantaged backgrounds.
UK workers intuitively recognise this, and 92% view essential skills as important for career success - more than for technical skills or numeracy.
Essential skills are those highly transferable skills that everyone needs to do almost any job, which make specific knowledge and technical skills fully productive. These are therefore distinct from basic skills (literacy, numeracy and digital skills) and technical skills (specific to a particular sector or role, sometimes drawing off a particular body of knowledge).
These highly transferable skills include communication, interpersonal, problem solving, and self-management skills. We approach them as eight skills:
- Listening and Speaking;
- Problem Solving and Creativity;
- Staying Positive and Aiming High; and
- Leadership and Teamwork.
Our global Partnership is centred around building essential skills. Through defining essential skills, we challenge the often confusing terminology around them with a view to establishing a consistent language and shared approach.
MPs and the APPG panel were very much in agreement. As an example of a great model, we cited UK Youth’s Hatch programme, which is consistent in its language across education, youth work and employment around essential skills.
Consistently providing high-quality opportunities to build essential skills using the Universal Framework would remove one of the primary barriers to young people’s success in the first steps of their careers.
Essential skills, such as Staying Positive, can help young people to overcome setbacks and achieve goals
Mental Health and Wellbeing outcomes were also discussed, which allowed a focus on how the Skills Builder Universal Framework allows essential skills to be built to support these outcomes.
But it is clear that young people’s wellbeing can also be nurtured through the development of essential skills like Staying Positive, for young people to be able to develop tactics and strategies to overcome setbacks and achieve goals.
One example of this in the literature is the MYRIAD Project, which "tested the effects of a brief mindfulness intervention for early teens and found it to have no impact on preventing mental health problems or promoting well-being.
In order to improve well-being for young people, it is likely we need to make broader systemic changes in schools that both teach them new coping skills and support staff to create environments where youth feel valued and respected.”
Supporting the need for development of essential skills in young people
The APPG meeting highlighted the need for the government to do more to support the development of transferable skills in young people.
Government and organisations across sectors should provide high-quality opportunities to build the eight essential skills. To do this in a way that is inclusive, effective and enables social mobility, it should be done consistently using the Universal Framework for essential skills.
“This session was a powerful call to action to ensure we are not just empowering young people to meet the challenges of now and the future, but are also bringing about systemic change to ensure educators, employers and organisations are equipped to ensure young people’s potential can be realised.
Alongside the wealth of evidence, insight and expertise, there was a common thread through the discussion: the importance of transferable skills to unlock learning, boost productivity, positively impact levels of life satisfaction and support the acquisition of new knowledge and technical skills in an ever-changing world.
There is a skills gap and we all have a role to play in addressing this. The need for more clarity, consistency and credibility around transferable skills in all areas of our lives was evident, and the Skills Builder Universal Framework for Essential Skills gives everyone, at every stage of their lives, the opportunities to build them.”
– Tom Varley, Inclusion Lead at Skills Builder, who spoke at the APPG.
The Skills Builder approach in practice
Members of the Skills Builder Partnership have demonstrated how powerful this approach can be in a full range of settings: primary and secondary schools, special schools, alternative provision settings, colleges, and universities.
We also work with impact partners covering areas including employability, sports, the arts, volunteering, parental engagement, STEM, inclusion, and retraining.
Progress in essential skills is not measured by GCSEs or other public examinations. Instead, we have developed and refined our approach to make it easy for teachers and students to build and measure progress in essential skills through six principles.
These Principles have been built up over a decade’s experience and help educators and all those working to build essential skills implement essential skills teaching effectively.
Case Study: City Year UK
Since 2009, City Year UK has trained and supported over 1,500 young adults to coach and mentor over 15,000 pupils in need of extra help and over 90% of their volunteers move into higher education, employment or training within three months of completing their City Year.
City Year's Careers, Explore, Focus and Achieve Programme explicitly uses the Universal Framework for Essential Skills to give participants the time and opportunity to find out about their strengths and areas for development.
Through workshops, guest speakers, and dedicated mentors, CYUK's volunteers progress in skills development and gain insight into a range of career paths. The guided reflection curriculum and alumni programme support participants to reflect half-termly - setting goals for the skills they want to develop and after the programme to track and quantify whether progress has been made.
We recommend the wider integration of the Universal Framework for Essential Skills into CEAIG at all stages of education as well as for use by youth-focused organisations.
What can you do to help young people develop essential skills?
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