See contents
“This important new research illustrates that effectively integrating essential skills into the curriculum requires more than a sticking plaster solution. It means nuanced, multi-faceted, system-wide reform.
With 85% of teaching professionals advocating the integration of essential skills across subjects, there’s a clear appetite for change. Policymakers seeking to drive up productivity and job satisfaction should view this report as essential reading for the future.”
Tens of thousands of teachers across the UK and world are already building the 8 essential skills in their classrooms with the rigour of the Skills Builder approach.
This research shows that teaching essential skills is highly motivating for teachers. It also shows that there is overwhelming support for system-wide policy changes that would make rigorously building these skills in every classroom a reality.
Essential skills are those highly transferable skills that everyone needs to do almost any job, which make knowledge and technical skills fully productive.1
There is a significant body of literature demonstrating the impact of higher levels of essential skills across a variety of domains: from efficacy to wage premia to life satisfaction. The importance of these skills is widely recognised in the wider population as well as by business.
So with huge demand for these skills, which despite the evidence base do not feature materially in English policy at a strategic level, the question moves to the practicalities of how they can be taught in education.2
There is a lot of evidence of what works in practice, but views of teaching professionals - as the people who will be teaching the skills in schools - are vital: both to understand demand from teachers and potential impact on job satisfaction, and to gain insight into how these professionals think the policy should work.
This paper shows that teaching professionals are overwhelmingly in support of building essential skills in education. The nationally representative findings, based on YouGov sampling of 1,006 teachers, reveal they have positive views on how they can be taught. It is clear that a system-wide approach to teaching essential skills is required if it is to succeed. And we present evidence that shifting policy to value essential skills in education would be likely to - by better aligning with teachers’ own values - improve job satisfaction.
This paper isn’t suggesting that policy-makers introduce essential skills into assessment, accountability and the curriculum solely because this is popular with teaching professionals. They should do that because the research shows that higher levels of essential skills unlock higher wages, job satisfaction, life satisfaction and social mobility.3
But what is clear from the nationally representative findings in this paper is that teaching professionals want the policy changes from government that will give them the time, resources, training and appropriate accountability so that they can explicitly teach the 8 essential skills to their learners alongside literacy and numeracy. They want these changes because, working with young people every day, they intuitively see what the research has shown: that building essential skills in education will help young people to succeed in education and in life.
Any government looking to resolve the teacher retention crisis will be looking at workload, pay and accountability. But they should also be looking at creating an education system that aligns with teachers’ motivations. Giving teachers the tools to build essential skills is likely to be one way to improve job satisfaction.
Fortunately, we are not starting with a blank canvas. At a national level, several countries have already built essential skills into their education systems. For example, in Australia, the Australian Core Skills Framework supports educators to build speaking and listening skills alongside literacy and numeracy. In the Czech Republic, teachers are being trained to use the Skills Builder approach to build the essential skills of their learners alongside the traditional core curriculum. In Kenya, teachers are using the Skills Builder approach to build age-related expectations for essential skills into the curriculum, complemented by assessment methods to track progress designed by the Kenyan National Examinations Council. Meanwhile, the OECD has been developing their widely referenced PISA tests to include essential skills like creativity and critical problem solving.
Across the UK, hundreds of schools are building the essential skills of their learners using the open-source Universal Framework. They are using the same structured approach and language to skills as leading interventions like those delivered by National Citizens Service and UK Youth. There are also a rapidly increasing number of employers across sectors using the very same framework in their recruitment and staff development, from firms like Allen & Overy to LNER.
Last year alone, Skills Builder Partnership trained over 20,000 teachers, providing them with the pedagogical foundations for building the essential skills of their learners. This foundation consists of six principles of essential skills education that have been shown to work in practice:
What our country needs, what our workers and our teachers see as so critical to life outcomes, is a cohesive, joined up approach to building essential skills. This means beginning with a complete education that builds the portfolio of skills that lead to productivity and social mobility, and continuing throughout individuals’ lives.
1. UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) (2009). The Employability Challenge
2. See, for example, House of Commons Committee (2022): Developing workforce skills for a strong economy; Crowley, L (2023): Skills development in the UK workplace; Department for Education (2021): Skills for Jobs: Lifelong Learning for Opportunity and Growth
3. Seymour, W & Craig, R (2023): Essential Skills Tracker 2023
Teaching professionals value essential skills even more highly than the overwhelming levels of importance attributed by the general population - of UK working-age adults, 92% believe that essential skills are important for success within their career. There is a very clear view that a portfolio of skills is viewed as important for learners’ success in education and in securing employment opportunities.
Teaching professionals also seem to recognise findings from other research that this is not a zero-sum game (i.e. controlling for one skill does not reduce the effect of other skills on life outcomes). For securing employment opportunities, teachers almost unanimously see a portfolio of essential skills, literacy and numeracy as being important for employment opportunities, at 98%, 99% and 96% of respondents respectively.
There is, however, an implicit gap between what’s important for success in employment and in education. In particular, while essential skills are viewed as important for success in education, this is not to quite the same extent as for success in employment. And conversely, academic knowledge is viewed as important for success in education, but less so for success in employment. The implication is that the education system does not balance the priority of - or treat equally - factors that are important for success in later life.
Teachers therefore want to build essential skills. This is because most teaching professionals (92%) view explicitly teaching essential skills as important in preparing learners for both life and work, with almost half (47%) believing this to be very important.4
Considering both the importance of essential skills for life and work and teaching professionals’ motivations of preparing young people for life and work, it follows that they would feature prominently in why they continue to teach. In fact, for a significant majority (67%), being able to prepare young people for successful lives, including through teaching essential skills, is important to their reasoning for remaining in the profession.5
4. Respondents were asked: “How important do you think it is to explicitly teach essential skills in order to prepare students / pupils for…life / work?”
5. Respondents were asked: “In deciding to remain in the teaching profession, which factors are most important to you:...Being able to prepare students / pupils for successful lives, including through teaching Essential skills?”
Teachers’ perceptions of the efficacy of the education system in several dimensions are not favourable. A minority believe that the current schooling system prepares young people for life (37%) and work (41%). Strikingly, only a very small number of respondents believe that the system prepares young people for life and work “very well” (3% and 2% respectively).
Figure 2.2: teacher perceptions of how well the current education system prepares learners for the workplace, by role
This perception of the education system is reflected in - and perhaps related to - how the quality of teaching is assessed by Ofsted and school leadership. Nearly all teachers (93%) think the quality of their teaching is assessed by their school leadership and Ofsted on grades. But the majority (51%) do not believe that preparing young people for fulfilling and productive lives is something they are assessed on.6
It is in the context of an education system perceived to be somewhat divergent from the aims of those delivering it, that we consider those individuals’ wellbeing. Self-reported wellbeing of teachers is lower than the general population.7 Teaching professionals have significantly lower levels of job satisfaction, life satisfaction, feeling worthwhile and happiness than the average person. And conversely, they report higher levels of anxiety than the general public.
| Metric | Mean (weighted) | ONS Value | Difference (weighted) | Difference (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Life Satisfaction | 6.64 | 7.45 | -0.81 | -11% |
| Job Satisfaction | 5.62 | 7.40 | -1.78 | -24% |
| Feeling Worthwhile | 7.01 | 7.73 | -0.72 | -9% |
| Happiness | 6.55 | 7.39 | -0.84 | -11% |
| Anxiety | 4.66 | 3.23 | 1.43 | +44% |
Figure 2.3: wellbeing measures of teaching professionals compared to ONS national averages
Of those wellbeing measures, job satisfaction shows the most striking difference: it is 24% lower for teaching professionals than the national average (5.6 compared to 7.4 out of 10).
The data we have seen in this chapter reiterate the challenges facing the school system: a perception among the individuals delivering education that it is failing to prepare learners for life and work; and a challenge of making the teaching profession attractive to its current and future workforce. There are undoubtedly a wide range of factors at play here, but in the following chapters we will home in on where essential skills sit amongst them.
6. Respondents were asked: “To what extent do you think that the quality of your teaching is assessed by your leadership team and Ofsted on each of the following…”
7. ONS Personal well-being in the UK: April 2022 to March 2023 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/april2022tomarch2023
Only a quarter of teaching professionals agree that essential skills are currently being taught sufficiently in education (24%), with a very small number agreeing strongly (3%).
To understand the potential causes for this large gap between the importance placed on essential skills and the perceived reality of what is being delivered, aside from policy, we can look to the series of barriers to effective teaching of these skills by teaching professionals.
Given workload pressures, it might be expected that sufficient time in the curriculum to teach essential skills would be cited by teachers as the primary barrier to teaching them effectively. And it is. A total of 96% of teaching professionals in the UK see this as a barrier, with a very high proportion (79%) viewing lack of time as a large barrier.
However, to effectively teach a subject or skill requires more than simply time - as important a variable as that is. A large majority of teaching professionals recognise a series of other barriers to teaching essential skills. A number of these are about the infrastructure around the teaching and suggest that most teaching professionals seek:
These findings are consistent with Skills Builder’s previous qualitative research into barriers to teaching essential skills. While teachers in that sample reported insufficient value placed on essential skills being a barrier, it also found that: “Time and a lack of training and consistent approaches were pressing barriers felt by teachers. This was largely due to a knowledge-rich curriculum leaving little space to focus on other areas as well as a lack of confidence in their ability to teach the skills.”8
What we have seen is that teaching professionals don’t think there’s a quick fix to essential skills being taught effectively in education. Simply providing training, or time in the curriculum on their own would be unlikely to achieve the lasting impact that is required. Instead, a successful approach will need to be nuanced, multi-faceted and system-wide.
Fortunately, we also have a great deal of good practice to draw on. In the next chapter, we will work through the solutions to the barriers set out above - as identified by teaching professionals.
8. Crighton, E & Ravenscroft, R (2021): Essential skills: Teachers’ perspectives on opportunities and barriers
We can close the gap between what motivates individuals to join the teaching profession and how school leadership and Ofsted assess their teaching. From the perspective of what motivates teachers, skills and knowledge are complementary: teachers overwhelmingly believe both to be important. Developing character and achieving social mobility are also viewed as important, though the number who are motivated (and indeed very motivated) by helping learners pass exams is lower.
| Very important | Fairly important | Fairly unimportant | Very unimportant | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| To prepare learners for fulfilling and productive lives | 71% | 26% | 2% | 0% |
| To develop learners characters | 63% | 34% | 2% | 1% |
| To develop learners skills | 60% | 38% | 1% | 1% |
| To develop learners knowledge | 55% | 43% | 2% | 0% |
| To prepare learners for the world of work | 44% | 46% | 9% | 2% |
| To improve social mobility | 41% | 45% | 12% | 3% |
| To help learners pass exams | 20% | 49% | 23% | 8% |
Figure 4.1: Responses to the question, “How important, or unimportant, are the following to you when considering your motivation for being a teacher?”
![A horizontal range chart showing the difference in responses to how motivated teachers are, and the extent to which they are assessed on these factors. The factors listed to the left of the chart are ‘fulfilling and productive lives’, and ‘academic progress or exam’. One end of each range shows the percentage of responses stating that this is an important motivation, and the other side showing responses to those who agree they are assessed on this. The graph shows nearly all of responses agree they are motivated by [preparing learners for] fulfilling and productive lives, whereas only around half responded they are motivated by this. For academic progress or exam, the graph shows less respondents are motivated by this than assessed on this.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5a86b2cd68b41700017162ca/65fc22b524bdd0572f6dbe61_Graph%208.svg)
We looked at the difference between what teachers said they were motivated by and what they said they felt they were assessed on by school leadership and Ofsted. Specifically, we calculated the difference between the extent that preparing learners for fulfilling and productive lives was a motivation, and the extent to which teachers feel they are assessed on this. We used this difference in modelling to predict job satisfaction. Our analysis showed that the bigger the difference between what teachers said they were motivated by and what they are assessed on, the lower their job satisfaction. Moving from the upper to lower quartile of difference between motivation and assessment was associated with a 14% increase in job satisfaction. In line with the literature on ‘value consonance’, the implication is that if teachers were assessed on preparing young people for productive and fulfilling lives (and felt that this was the case), alongside other factors, they may have higher levels of job satisfaction.
Teaching essential skills in education is an incredibly popular policy with teaching professionals. A total of 94% support this approach, with the majority (52%) “strongly” supporting building essential skills in education.9
That’s at a top level, but does this support continue into teachers’ own classrooms? It does. A very high proportion (85%) see threading essential skills throughout subjects as being important to them being taught successfully. Over half (52%) think separate lessons on essential skills are important and 74% see the potential for special projects (e.g. cross-curricular projects). Although beyond the scope of this paper, the compatibility of these approaches with different modes of teaching like project based learning are clear.
One policy lever for getting essential skills into classrooms is the national curriculum. 86% of teaching professionals agree that the national curriculum should include essential skills, with almost half (47%) agreeing strongly.
Both threading essential skills through existing subjects, and explicitly teaching and reflecting on steps of specific skills are approaches that tens of thousands of teachers have already successfully implemented in the UK.10 By drawing on individual steps as Learning Outcomes, teachers can make more explicit and effective skills development that might have been implicit without requiring additional time. For example, spending a few minutes to introduce mind mapping before a creative task, to set success criteria for effectively working together before a group activity, or making planning techniques and goal-setting explicit.
Without central government mandate or any incentives, hundreds of schools have realised the value of building essential skills and adopted strategies to realise their ambitions. For example, Sophie Gavalda, Head Teacher of Outstanding rated school William Tyndale comments that the impact of teaching essential skills “on the children was immediate, with high levels of engagement… as a school we thought, actually, this should become part of our curriculum.”
[The impact of teaching essential skills] “on the children was immediate, with high levels of engagement… as a school we thought, actually, this should become part of our curriculum.”
Sophie Gavalda, Head Teacher, William Tyndale Primary
It has therefore been shown essential skills can be built without significant changes to curriculum time, alongside investing some school time required to implement these varied strategies effectively. Both qualitative data from Skills Builder and academic research from EEF suggest the potential for accelerated learning and achievement, which would create some space for these.11 The case for system-wide change, introducing other measures popular with teachers - for example fewer high-stakes assessments - is particularly compelling due to the combined potential for creating more space to prepare learners for fulfilling and productive lives.
Teaching professionals also see the potential for assessment to shift to being more holistic to include essential skills (86% support this) as well as multi-modal (92%).12 Shifting to multi-modal assessment that gives young people the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and knowledge through different types of assessment would be particularly well-suited to allowing learners to demonstrate skills like speaking, listening and teamwork.
Teaching skills not currently included in the curriculum, and shifting to new forms of assessment would require teachers to build new capabilities. Indeed, we saw in the previous chapter that over three quarters of teaching professionals see a lack of continuing professional development (‘CPD’) as a barrier to effective teaching of essential skills. Despite this potential barrier, appetite for this CPD is high: 81% report they would be likely to pursue CPD on how to teach their young people essential skills.
But there is a secondary opportunity here too. What if, as well as building their learners’ essential skills, teachers could also improve their own speaking, leadership and staying positive? Employers across other sectors see such training opportunities for their staff as vital, and there is no reason why teachers shouldn’t also benefit.13 There is big appetite for this amongst teaching professionals themselves: three quarters (75%) say they would be likely to pursue CPD to build their own essential skills.
Finally, there is an opportunity to build off the success in changes to careers education in a way that enjoys the support of teaching professionals. Dedicated class time to focus on essential skills is seen by teaching professionals to be similarly important (86%) for giving young people the skills and knowledge about the workplace as well-established modes like work experience (88%). Critically, linking back to proposals for curriculum reform, nearly all teaching professionals (93%) think curriculum links connecting essential skills to subject learning are important for careers education, with nearly half (45%) believing this to be very important.
So our roadmap to teaching essential skills, which would likely contribute to improved job satisfaction, includes the different modes of teaching essential skills that have broad support among UK teachers. But recalling one of the barriers identified by teachers: we need a shared framework that breaks the skills down into a sequence of teachable, measurable steps. The Skills Builder Universal Framework for essential skills does just this. And it has the backing of a large majority of teaching professionals. 87% support implementation across all schools of a framework that breaks the 8 skills down into teachable, measurable steps, to enable the teaching of essential skills.
Teaching professionals see the potential that adopting the Universal Framework across all schools could have. While over three quarters (77%) think the framework would have a positive impact on young people’s future employment outcomes, a significant majority (66%) believe the framework would have a positive impact on education outcomes even sooner.
As we have seen, we require a nuanced, system-wide approach to ensure that essential skills are taught effectively in education. All of the above solutions for building essential skills have not only been trialled and piloted, but shown to work at scale. They align with the Skills Builder principles for building essential skills that are used widely in schools across the country as well as the globe.
And what we have seen in this chapter is that there are a series of policy changes required that would address the huge demand for teaching essential skills and the challenges to building them effectively. Essential skills should be recognised in accountability, they should be assessed, taught explicitly - whether threaded through other subjects or as standalone lessons - and teachers should receive training on how to build them in the classroom. Critically, these structural changes enjoy very broad support from teaching professionals.
9. Respondents were asked: “To what extent do you support or oppose the teaching of essential skills in education?”
10. Skills Builder (2023): Impact Report
11. Ibid
12. Respondents were asked: “Do you think that assessment in schools should or should not…Be multimodal (i.e. giving students / pupils the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and knowledge through different forms of assessment)...Be more holistic (i.e. measure knowledge, basic skills and Essential skills of teamwork, leadership, problem solving, creativity, speaking, listening, aiming high and staying positive)”
13. See for example: CIPD (2018): Reforming technical education: Employers' views of T Levels; CBI (2019): Getting young people ‘work ready’
