It’s been just over a month since we officially launched the updated Universal Framework, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. From schools and colleges, to small businesses, global employers, and forward-thinking impact organisations, we’re already seeing the difference the refreshed Framework is making.
Today, we’re just as excited to share updates to two of our key products that bring the research-driven power of the Universal Framework to life: Hub and Benchmark.
Skills Builder Hub is a digital platform that educators use to assess and teach essential skills. It is the UK's leading platform for building essential skills and has been adopted by thousands of educators across the globe. Last year alone, it supported more than 57,000 learners, helping teachers bring essential skills into everyday learning.
Skills Builder Benchmark is the world’s leading tool for individuals to assess their levels of essential skills. It is used widely by employers to understand their teams’ skill levels and target professional development, as well as by educators and impact organisations. In the past year, more than 200,000 self-assessments were completed, giving individuals and organisations valuable insight into skill strengths and next steps.
Skills Builder Hub: Building essential skills in every classroom
With the Framework at its core, the updated Skills Builder Hub has been expanded and refined to make it even easier for educators to embed essential skills. Built on our latest research, partner insights, and inclusive practice, it now offers more variety, accessibility, and clarity than ever before.
We're excited to announce the launch of a brand new resource: Curriculum Guides. We now have 33 guides covering nine subjects at secondary level. These guides provide subject-specific content with direct links to the eight essential skills. Each one contains age-appropriate activities and exercises designed to help you deliver English national curriculum outcomes for your subject and targeted steps of the updated Universal Framework. You can use these activities directly or adapt them to deliver other curriculum areas.
An upcoming subject filter will make it quicker than ever to find curriculum-aligned resources, helping you build skills across every subject.
For focused teaching, you’ll also find 384 short lessons - one for every building block of the Framework at every step. Each lasts around 20 minutes, making it easy to run targeted, engaging sessions that fit seamlessly into the school day.
These resources are also more interactive, diverse, and accessible, with a broader range of characters and tasks that help every learner see themselves in the journey.
Planning is easier too. Posters, passports, reflective logs, certificates, and workbooks have all been updated with the refreshed Universal Framework symbols and language, giving learners clear, tangible milestones to track and celebrate their growing skills.
Skills Builder Benchmark
Alongside Hub, Skills Builder Benchmark has also been refreshed in line with the new Universal Framework. The result is a tool that gives individuals clearer, more accurate, and more inclusive assessments of their essential skills - while remaining consistent with past data.
Above all, the update provides greater clarity for users. With simplified language and step summaries, individuals can interpret their skill steps more easily, leading to more accurate self-assessments and more reliable data.
For those using Benchmark in employment settings, this means clearer insights into strengths and areas for development - moving beyond vague labels like “good teamwork” or “strong communication” towards a measurable, structured understanding of skills.
Benchmark has also been refined to be more inclusive across ages and backgrounds. By aligning skill steps with age-related expectations, it now provides a meaningful assessment experience for individuals at any stage of life - whether they’re starting out in education, entering the workforce, or continuing to build skills later in their career.
Explore what’s new in Hub and Benchmark
We’re truly excited at Skills Builder to share the updated Hub and Benchmark. Both tools have already helped individuals across a wide range of settings to thrive in their essential skills journeys. Underpinned by the world’s leading Framework for essential skills development, we can’t wait to see the impact these updates will unlock next.
You can explore the refreshed Skills Builder Hub and Skills Builder Benchmark today.
