September 2022

Trailblazer Report 2022

This paper brings you practical insights on why and how to build essential skills into your business. It is based on years of research by professionals and academics as well as practical experience, with case studies from a range of employers that have leveraged a structured approach to skills in order to boost their recruitment, staff development & outreach.

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September 2022

The Skills Builder Handbook for Educators

Over the last decade, the Skills Builder approach has transformed the teaching of essential skills in education systems and classrooms across the world.

Essential skills like communication, collaboration, creative problem solving and self-management having long been called for.

New evidence shows that these skills unlock learning in the classroom, boosting academic outcomes, perseverance and self-belief. They halve the likelihood of being out of work, and increase earnings across a lifetime. They even boost wellbeing and life satisfaction.

But access to these skills isn’t fair. As educators, it can be difficult to go from knowing these skills matter to how to teach them in the classroom with real rigour.

Published in full for the first time, this Handbook helps any educator to use the Skills Builder approach with their learners – whether in primary school, secondary school, college or special school.

It starts by exploring how skills are built, and the key principles that make a difference. Principles that include being transparent about the steps to mastery, working across all ages, assessing skills robustly, directly teaching core tools and concepts, and then practicing them in lots of settings.

By breaking essential skills down into teachable steps, educators can dip in and out of this Handbook to assess, teach, and practice each skill step in turn for learners at all ages and stages. In doing so, educators can accelerate learners’ mastery of these skills, and navigate them to success.

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March 2022

Essential Skills Tracker 2022

There have long been calls for greater emphasis on essential skills, whether from business organisations, or from educators. But evidence on essential skill levels across the UK is limited.

The Essential Skills Tracker changes that. For the first time, we have a complete picture of how adults across the UK are building and using their essential skills – and where the gaps are.

In collaboration with YouGov, more than 2,200 adults completed an assessment against the Skills Builder Universal Framework. These assessments of essential skills including teamwork, communication, and creativity skills were then linked up with key demographic, job, education, and earnings data.

What did we learn? Read inside to find out.

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June 2021

Essential skills: Teachers' perspectives on opportunities and barriers

This research piece was led by Emma Crighton, a member of our Education Team at Skills Builder. The paper channels the voices of teachers and their motivations around building essential skills for their learners. It also explores the barriers teacher face and how Skills Build can address some of these, as well as where wider policy change is needed. Speaking to teachers within and beyond the Skills Builder network, as well as seven leaders in the education sector, the insights gathered include:

Five key motivators for teachers when it comes to building essential skills for their learners: to prepare students for life, to support career development and employability, to unlock learning and opportunities for all, to support strategic priorities and to raise aspirations.
Time and a lack of training and consistent approach towards essentials skills prevent teachers from building essential skills universally. A further barrier stems from wider policy restrictions with regard to the value placed on essential skills. These restrictions include performance and attainment measures, the current knowledge-based curriculum and the reduced scope of collaboration between education institutions
Teachers and sector leaders suggest some possible solutions, including: increased teacher training, a redesign of the curriculum, a review of the accountability system and capitalising on the flexibility in the current system.
The Skills Builder partnership is seen to support schools and colleges to overcome challenges in seven key areas.
Whilst Skills Builder will continue to encourage teachers to tap into their motivations to teach essential skills, change is needed at a policy level to move towards a more supportive education system which places higher value on essential skills.

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February 2021

Better prepared: Essential skills and employment outcomes for young people

This report is built off a new research study conducted with YouGov including more than 3,000 young people aged 16-24 years-old. Individuals completed a self-assessment against the Skills Builder Universal Framework, as well as sharing other outcomes data. Insights generated include:

That higher levels of essential skills are correlated with higher social advantage and greater levels of parental engagement, and inversely correlated with attending an Alternative Provision setting or having a special educational need.
Overwhelmingly, young people see the value of essential skills across key aspects of their lives for transition, including academic performance (78%), university entrance (66%), successful recruitment (91%), progression in employment (91%), and overcoming wider life challenges (89%).
There are strong links between higher essential skill scores and self-efficacy and perseverance of effort.
There is evidence of a wage premium of around 15% or £3,400 per year for full-time workers aged over 19 moving from the 1st percentile of skills score up to the median. This wage premium is substantially increased in cases where young people report confidence in applying their essential skills in a range of scenarios. In this case, the wage premium for those individuals rises to £10,200.

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January 2021

Essential skills and their impact on education outcomes

This report is built off new analysis of the British Cohort Study, creating proxy measures for essential skill levels when individuals were aged 10- and 16-years-old in 1980 and 1986 respectively. The analysis sought to test five hypotheses, by linking together datasets around the British Cohort Study (1970). In doing so, we found that higher levels of self-reported essential skills levels are associated with:

Higher levels of literacy at primary school, as measured by the Edinburgh Reading Test
Higher levels of numeracy at primary school, as measured by the Friendly Math Test
Higher levels of mathematics qualifications at secondary school, as measured by O-Level and CSE results
Higher academic performance, as perceived by teachers
Higher levels of career aspiration

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October 2020

How do essential skills influence life outcomes? An evidence review

This report was written by the Centre for Education & Youth with the Skills Builder Partnership, and reviewed existing robust academic studies exploring the links between essential skills and wider life outcomes. The report highlighted evidence of three links:

That essential skills support academic outcomes, particularly through the focus on self-management skills of Aiming High and Staying Positive, as well as communication skills of Listening and Speaking.
That essential skills support positive employment outcomes, including higher wages.
That essential skills support social and emotional wellbeing, as well as preventing negative behaviours.

Where studies in this review explored the features of effective delivery, they indicated that essential skills interventions tend to be more effective when regular, long term, explicit, embedded, structured, supported and targeted.

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May 2020

Towards a Universal Framework for Essential Skills

This report brings together analysis of the Skills Builder Framework and how it could be extended to act as a universal framework – equally relevant to individuals at all stages of their education or careers. Developed as part of the Essential Skills Taskforce, the work reviewed the completeness and relevance of the existing Skills Builder approach through four comparative lenses:

International examples of employability frameworks
Job advertisement data
Apprenticeship standards
Universities’ graduate attribute statements

The framework was the tested through a series of roundtables with employers, educators, and other individuals to ensure that it was not only rigorous but usable. The final result was the Skills Builder Universal Framework.

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October 2017

The Missing Piece: The Essential Skills that Education Forgot

This book was written by Skills Builder’s founder, Tom Ravenscroft, reflecting on the lessons learned over the organisation’s first eight years. Drawing on experience and the broad literature around education and skills development, the book explores:

The gap between the apparent need for essential skills and how they are built in the education system.
The myths and misconceptions about skill development that hold us back.
Which skills are truly essential and how they can be defined and broken down.
The principles for building skills in different settings.

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September 2017

Enterprise Skills: Teachability, Measurability, and Next Steps

This report, written by LKMco (now the Centre for Education & Youth), reviewed the evidence around enterprise education and the best-practice principles developed by Enabling Enterprise (now Skills Builder Partnership). This evidence review was complemented by a roundtable in January 2017, and five case studies of primary and secondary schools using the approach around the country.

The report highlighted that:

Evidence suggested that specific skills could have a positive impact on the development of young people, and schools felt that there were positive effects on academic performance.
Skill development can be measured and tracked, and schools were using the Skills Builder Framework as a useful tool in this regard.
There are differences in essential skills by socio-economic background and if unaddressed these gaps could persist throughout education.

The report highlighted priorities to:

Build consensus around the language of essential skills, bringing greater coherence to work taking place across the education sector.
Promote ways of assessing essential skills that provides useful feedback for pupils and their teachers, helping young people’s ability and confidence in these skills grow.
Develop a rigorous evidence base exploring how these skills vary by children and young people’s backgrounds, and what works in closing any gaps that appear.

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November 2022

Impact Report 2022

It's been another transformative year for Skills Builder Partnership and the culmination of our three year strategy beginning in 2019.

Our Impact Report 2022 celebrates the collective impact that the 841 partners who make up the Partnership are continuing to have, and shares the growing reach and impact of our shared work, delivering more than 2.3 million high quality interventions in 2021-22:

Employers: 120 employers were part of the Partnership, with 55 working towards our Excellence Standards by embedding Skills Builder across their outreach, recruitment, and staff development.
Education: 15,669 teachers have been trained and built the essential skills of 202,497 students. Students in partner schools doubled the rate of essential skill development against peers. In the last year, 87% of UK secondary schools and colleges have a touchpoint with the Partnership.
Impact Organisations: 214 impact organisations delivered 2.06 million high-quality opportunities to build essential skills through youth work, the arts, careers and employability training, STEM activities, sports and more.
Products: Our four products for individuals and teachers to assess and build essential skills were used by a further 96,390 active learners.

This year, we grew our international work, with programmes running in ten countries, and our products used in many more. Together, we are driving global change to achieve our shared vision: one day, everyone will build the essential skills to succeed.

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October 2021

Impact Report 2021

It has been a breakthrough year for the Skills Builder Partnership, and I’m excited to be able to share our 2021 Impact Report. The year has not been short of challenges on many fronts and for many of our 725 partners. We have all been affected by the pandemic and lockdowns.

At the same time, the work we do supporting everyone to build their essential skills has never been more important. These skills matter for children who have spent months isolated form their peers. They can support young people struggling to manage examinations and completing school or college under huge uncertainty. They are a vital for individuals navigating huge change in their workplaces or wider lives.

Our research publications this year have highlighted that all too often essential skills are correlated with demographics and opportunities to build them are not fairly distributed. At the same time, boosting essential skills is correlated with better school performance, higher self-efficacy and career ambitions, and with a substantial wage premium.

In the Partnership, we are all keenly aware of the urgency of what we are doing. ‍So I am encouraged that despite the circumstances, the Partnership has made huge strides towards our mission, across all of the different strands of our work.

As a result, the Partnership has delivered 1,468,611 opportunities for individuals to boost their essential skills this year. This combines the 187,783 individuals who built their essential skills through programmes that were run in schools and colleges by our central team. It includes a further 65,504 who benefited as individuals from our products. However, it also includes the wider impact of 1,215,324 opportunities for individuals to build their essential skills through approved programmes of partners.

This is a significant step forwards for our collective reach – a total more than four times that of the previous year. We are also seeing meaningful progress on our national reach: through the Partnership, more than 75% of UK secondary schools and colleges now have some use of the Skills Builder approach. We are ambitious for the coming years. We are piloting our work in seven countries in the coming year, as well as expanding to the other home nations of the UK. Our work with employers is growing quickly, with 25 employers now embedding the Skills Builder approach into how they hire and grow their staff, helping to level the playing field and ease transitions into work.

We have a long way to go, but I’d like to congratulate all of our partners on an incredible year and an important step towards our shared mission.

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November 2020

Impact Report 2020

It has certainly not been the year that we originally planned for across the Partnership, but the pandemic has demonstrated our collective determination and resilience.

One of the biggest shifts for us this year has been the launch of the Skills Builder Universal Framework - a collaborative effort over 18 months, developed with the CBI, CIPD, Gatsby Foundation, Business in the Community, Careers & Enterprise Company and the EY Foundation. This has helped to better join up all of our efforts and provide a complete journey for any individual to master their essential skills.

We have seen continued strong growth in impact across all three strands of the Partnership:

We supported 437 schools and colleges to embed the best practice principles for building essential skills that we have honed over the last decade. This included training more than 9,000 teachers, and reaching 176,000 students.
We saw a growing number of our 92 employer partners using the Framework in their outreach work, their recruitment processes, and how they train and develop their apprentices and wider staff teams.
We also partnered with 105 impact organisations. The organisations in the Partnership gave 115,203 more individuals the chance to identify, review, and practice essential skills.

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November 2019

Impact Report 2019

This year, we celebrated 10 years since we got started as Enabling Enterprise back in 2009. Over that time, our work has constantly evolved, to where we are today as the Skills Builder Partnership. We made the shift because working together and combining our efforts is by far the best way to ensure that one day, everyone builds the essential skills to succeed.

Across the three strands of the Skills Builder Partnership, the headlines are:

We directly trained and supported 514 schools and colleges last year - that’s more than 130,000 children and young people empowered to build essential skills through our programmes.
Employer partners have always been a critical part of our work, hosting trips, supporting programme design and funding our work. This last year, 121 supported us in this way. We’re excited that a growing number are expanding their work, building the Skills Builder approach into how they recruit, train and support their own staff.
We worked with 59 impact organisations including the Careers & Enterprise Company, the National Literacy Trust, and the British Council. Together, we’re using the shared language and outcomes of the Skills Builder approach.

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Impact Report 2018

This 2018 Impact Report captures a transformational year for Enabling Enterprise. In our ninth year, we have worked with more students than ever before – with 95,938 students completing one of our programmes this year. It’s great to see that even as our work continues to grow, we have been able to maintain the impact of our programmes at scale.

This year has seen a big shift in broadening our work beyond our existing partnership of 335 schools and 130 employer partners. In October 2017, The Missing Piece: The Essential Skills that Education Forgot was published by John Catt Publishing, drawing together the evidence base and what we’d learnt in ensuring that every child and young person builds the essential skills to thrive.

Then, in May 2018, we launched the Skills Builder Framework and the Partnership behind it. The Framework is the culmination of more than four years work and takes the eight essential skills and turns breaks them down into teachable, measurable chunks. The process of refinement benefited from the expertise of more than sixty individuals and piloting in twenty organisations. As we enter our tenth year, the organisation goes from strength to strength: we are seeing a surge of interest and excitement from schools across the country in building the essential skills of their students, and the Partnership is growing by the day.

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November 2017

Impact Report 2017

It’s a huge pleasure to be able to share our Impact Report for 2017. The last year has seen our partnership take a meaningful step forward towards achieving our mission.

Our programmes have continued to grow quickly, with over 87,000 students across the country taking part in an Enabling Enterprise programme in the last year. That is almost double the number just two years ago.

This year we passed a milestone, with over 250,000 student programmes now completed over the seven years of Enabling Enterprise.

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UPCOMING webinars

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Previous webinars

March 2022

FOR

Educators

Using Skills Builder to support a National Professional Qualification

Research from the Centre for Education and Youth and Skills Builder showed that “essential skills interventions tend to be more effective when regular, long term, explicit, embedded, structured, supported and targeted.”

In this session, we heard from Skills Leaders from a range of schools talk about how they used Skills Builder and their NPQ to make sure that essential skills teaching was effective in their setting.

Please note: This event was available exclusively to schools and colleges on our flagship programme, the Accelerator.

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March 2022

FOR

Everyone

Essential Skills Tracker Launch

What is the level of essential skills in the UK, and is it improving?

That's what we've answered with the Essential Skills Tracker, which builds the picture of what essential skills development looks like across both the UK and adults’ lives.

At our official launch event, we heard the key findings from the Tracker's authors Robert Craig and Will Seymour, and insights from a discussion facilitated by our Founder and CEO, Tom Ravenscroft. We had great panelists join us:

Paul Drechsler CBE, Chair of London First and former President of the CBI
Maddie Dinwoodie, Chief Programme Officer, UK Youth

To learn more about the findings, click here.

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February 2022

FOR

Educators

Bringing Essential Skills to Life

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the eight essential skills are key to achieving success in education – but what about beyond the classroom?

That’s exactly the question that our first Education Webinar of 2022, taking place on February 3rd, homed in on. We explored recent research on why linking essential skills with real-world problems and challenges is so important, and looked at ways schools and colleges are using projects, challenge days, virtual trips, and work experience to bring essential skills to life.

Our Education Associate, Bethan Jeffers, was joined by a great panel of speakers, who spoke of the impact of building essential skills:

• Claire Noble, Teacher and Skills Leader at Saxon Mount School

• Katie Brooks, Year 4 Class Teacher and Skills Leader at Windy Arbor Primary School

• Lucy Harrison, Global Corporate Responsibility Co-ordinator at Linklaters LLP

• Phoebe Stone, Head of Sustainable Investing at LGT Vestra

Go to our blog to watch the recording and find out more.

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December 2021

FOR

Educators

Supporting Essential Skill Development at Home

Following the success of our Home Learning Hub resources, which were made available to schools and families as a response to the Covid pandemic, we have since worked to develop a new and improved resource platform: Skills Builder Homezone.

Homezone has been specifically designed to help parents and carers of children aged 3 to 14, to build their child’s essential skills at home. From family activities to supporting older children to access independent tools for their own skill development. Skills Builder Homezone can be enjoyed at a time and pace to suit all families.

We held an Education Webinar to help you get to grips with everything that’s new. Our Lead Associate for Parents and Carers, Alison Gale, was joined by fantastic guest speakers with a range of expertise in education and home learning support:

• Chris Johnson, Y6 teacher, UKS2 Phase Leader and Creative Curriculum Leader

• James Tristram, Enterprise Stream Lead, Shaftesbury Park Primary

• Leanne, Year 5 Parent Shaftsbury Park Primary

• Charlotte Fryatt, Senior Education Associate

• Laura Jones, Senior Education Associate Product

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October 2021

FOR

Educators

Careers & work-related learning

In the first Education Webinar of 2021-22, we focus discussion on the relationship between careers / work-related learning and the eight essential skills, at all phases of education. Hannah Senior, one of our Senior Associates at Skills Builder, walks through a selection of research, publications and government guidance on the role of essential skills in careers education. Plus, we hear from three expert speakers on the topic "How do essential skills support careers and work-related learning at Primary, Secondary and Post-16?". Guest speakers include:

Rachel Green - Education Engagement and Development Manager at The Careers and Enterprise Company
Eppie Silverman - Skills Leader at Shoreham Academy
Pete Thorpe - Head of Education and Partnerships at Youth Employment UK.

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29th June 2021

FOR

Educators

Essential skills: Teachers' perspectives on opportunities and barriers - Launch

During our final education webinar of the academic year, we launched our latest piece of research – Essential skills: Teachers’ perspectives on opportunities and barriers. This research channels the voice of teachers and their motivations around building essential skills for their learners. It also explores the barriers teacher face and how Skills Build can address some of these, as well as where wider policy change is needed. Emma Crighton from our Education team and the author of the paper shared the key findings of the report during the session before Tom Ravenscroft, our CEO, facilitated a fireside chat with a panel of guest speakers:

Olly Newton – Executive Director at the Edge Foundation
Nicola Hall – Director of Education at the Careers and Enterprise Company
Geraldine Tiddy – Head of Sixth Form at Wilmington Grammar School for Girls
Stuart Fryd – Deputy Headteacher at Mossford Green Primary School

Watch the recording of the webinar to hear the insight we gathered from the research and the reflections from our fantastic panel who joined us for the event.

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June 2021

FOR

Educators

Building essential skills outside the classroom

In June, our education webinar focused on how Skills Builder schools and colleges are embedding essential skills beyond the classroom through their work with parents and carers and Skills Builder platforms such as the Home Learning Hub and Skills Builder Benchmark. We heard from two members of the Skills Builder team who talked us through how these platforms were designed and how they can support teachers, individuals and parents and carers. This was contextualised by Zoe Armitage at Stanborough School and Colin Galley at New College Durham who shared how they develop essential skills beyond the classroom and the impact this has had for their pupils.

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15th March 2021

FOR

Educators

Creating Sustainable Change

In March, schools and colleges on a Skills Builder programme were invited to attend our third Education Webinar: Creating Sustainable Change.

The webinar began with an introduction from Skills Builder’s Emma Crighton who talked about how we recognise good practice in our schools and colleges through the Skills Builder Award. Emma outlines how the award was developed and how it is supporting our schools and colleges to embed long-term, sustainable essential skill development. You can download the award guide mentioned in the webinar at skillsbuilder.org/awardguide

During the webinar, we talked to four of our schools and colleges about where they were in their Skills Builder journey, how they used the programme in their setting and their plans for 2021-22. Watch the recording of the webinar to hear from our Skills Leaders, find out more about the award process and discover some new ideas and top tips for how to develop a long-term essential skills programme in your setting.

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28th January 2021

FOR

Educators

Inclusion and Essential Skills

On January 28th we ran our second Skills Builder Education Webinar for teachers and leaders signed up to a Skills Builder programme. This webinar explored how to teach the essential skills to learners with additional needs both in mainstream and specialist settings.

During the 45 minute webinar we heard from three fantastic speakers from schools and colleges who were embedding the Skills Builder approach for learners with additional needs. We also heard from the National Literacy Trust whose resources give all pupils the opportunity to apply the essential skills. This was followed by a Q&A and an update from Tom Varley, our SEND lead at Skills Builder who talked about some key resources and next steps.

If you work with learners with additional needs, are interested in developing an inclusive approach to skills teaching or are just interested in hearing some fantastic success stories from across the partnership, this webinar is for you.

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9th June 2020

FOR

Everyone

A Spotlight on Staying Positive

On 9th June our Director of Development Rosa Morgan-Baker hosted our first webinar based around the Skills Builder Framework, with a spotlight on Staying Positive. This essential skill is needed across contexts - all through education and on into employment and beyond. Watch the whole webinar, featuring an interview with our Founder & CEO Tom Ravenscroft.

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Keep up with all the latest from Skills Builder.

April 2022: New speakers confirmed for Partnership Day

November 2021: The big numbers from our 2021 Impact Report

December 2021: Round up

January 2022: New Year's updates

August 2021: Celebrating schools and colleges transforming essential skills this year

Insights

Trailblazer Report 2022

The Skills Builder Handbook for Educators

Essential Skills Tracker 2022

Essential skills: Teachers' perspectives on opportunities and barriers

Better prepared: Essential skills and employment outcomes for young people

Essential skills and their impact on education outcomes

How do essential skills influence life outcomes? An evidence review

Towards a Universal Framework for Essential Skills

The Missing Piece: The Essential Skills that Education Forgot

Enterprise Skills: Teachability, Measurability, and Next Steps

Impact Report 2022

Impact Report 2021

Impact Report 2020

Impact Report 2019

Impact Report 2018

Impact Report 2017

Using Skills Builder to support a National Professional Qualification

Essential Skills Tracker Launch

Bringing Essential Skills to Life

Supporting Essential Skill Development at Home

Careers & work-related learning

Essential skills: Teachers' perspectives on opportunities and barriers - Launch

Building essential skills outside the classroom

Creating Sustainable Change

Inclusion and Essential Skills

A Spotlight on Staying Positive

Sign up to our newsletter.

Keep up with all the latest from Skills Builder.

April 2022: New speakers confirmed for Partnership Day

November 2021: The big numbers from our 2021 Impact Report

December 2021: Round up

January 2022: New Year's updates

August 2021: Celebrating schools and colleges transforming essential skills this year

May 2021: Discover the new Impact Directory

April 2021: Introducing Skills Builder Launchpad!

March 2021: Applications for the Skills Builder Accelerator are open!

February 2021: Join us for a great event - plus, join our fantastic team

January 2021: An Invitation and exciting new research launching today

June 2020: Webinars, virtual visits and awards

Celebrating a decade building the essential skills for success

What's been going on in October 2019

What's been going on in September 2019

What's been going on in August 2019

What's been going on in June 2019

What's been going on in March 2019

What's been going on in February 2019

What's been going on in January 2019