2021 is drawing to a close, and a well-deserved break is on the horizon.

This year hasn’t been an easy one for anyone. However, we've been so impressed by the efforts of our partners over the last year. Together, we’re able to continue to pursue our mission: to ensure that one day, everyone builds the essential skills to succeed.

We appreciated seeing that recognised in the Covid response awards, where we received mention in the ‘Best Customer Service During COVID-19’ award in acknowledgment of our collective efforts to ensure teachers were supported in teaching essential skills through lockdown. We’re in the company of a line-up of organisations who’ve worked tirelessly this year to effect social change and support others in the midst of adversity, and to whom we extend warm congratulations.

While we’re grateful to be a recipient, there are too many people to count who deserve praise for their resilience and resourcefulness this year in our Partnership alone.

Educators have persisted in teaching skills to learners, even in the face of school closures and staff and student absences. Impact organisations continue to deliver indispensable skills programmes to a wide range of audiences on- and offline. Employers, acclimatising to a hybrid workforce and economic unpredictability, have continued to invest in the essential skills of their staff.

Meanwhile, each member of our team at Skills Builder Partnership kept calm and carried on developing products, resources, and services to support learners. Our Home Learning Hub, a stopgap response to an extended period of lockdowns, has taken a more permanent shape as Homezone: an e-learning platform to support parents and carers in building the essential skills of their children together at home.

What this Partnership, these awards, and these stories all ultimately teach us is that there’s real power in collective action: strength in numbers as we strive for a common objective. The extraordinary circumstances of the past year have offered unprecedented scope for understanding what people truly can’t live without and how adaptable we all can be.

So now we’re stepping into 2022, with all its uncertainties. At a time when everything that we know – including in education and skills – is being overhauled, we must take forward what we’ve learned from the past twelve months.

Across the Partnership we are continuing towards our shared goal, delivering more high-quality opportunities to boost essential skills than ever. These skills underpin so much that we value – they are the strength to work together, to learn and grow, and to do better each year than we did the last. Here's to 2022.

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