As we look ahead towards an economic reset post Covid-19 and Brexit, we need to ensure skills excellence is the standard we deliver to help economies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland attract investment and create jobs to inspire the next generation to succeed.

Working with our education and employer partners, WorldSkills UK has been evolving over the past few years to do just that. We have been harnessing insights from our work internationally to help turn global best practice into everyday practice, in order to support development of more educators to upskill more young people to reach the higher standards employers need. That’s why we have been moving forward with our partner NCFE over the past year to devise and roll out our new Centre of Excellence – to harness the best of British training talent, transfer their know-how and empower delivery of a standards revolution locally.

A skills standards 'revolution'

Our medal-winning training methods are honed through competitive pressure testing and supported by Olympians, elite sports psychologists and leading sports performance academics. There is a correlation between English colleges that embed our methods and "outstanding" Ofsted ratings. And the value of our training ecosystem was recognised last year in diagnostic research by the University of Oxford, which highlighted the potential gains from scaling up our work and engaging local leaders to help spread the benefits through a virtual Centre of Excellence.

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Background: WorldSkills UK unveils £1.5m Centre of Excellence

And there has clearly been pent-up demand. With over a quarter of college leaders from across the UK seeking to take part in the first year of the Centre of Excellence, we have been oversubscribed and so we have also set up a new network to help generate benchmarking and further innovation between colleges. Over the next three years we aim to empower a whole new cadre of teachers who can help some 40,000 young people, from a range of backgrounds, reach standards of excellence.

Tackling vocational snobbery

But, of course, raising our game in teacher training is only one part of the solution to mainstreaming excellence. Capital investment is also vital, as our tech industry partners reinforced in a roundtable with us last week. Building on a report we published in the summer, businesses told us that achieving higher standards will rely on training being done on the latest equipment and this needs more investment. Further, shifting the focus from competence to excellence in qualifications and standards will require enhanced collaboration, supported by national and international benchmarking. And with reform in the air – for example, with an FE White Paper in the pipeline in England and change mooted by the Scottish Funding Council – now is the time for sector leaders to tackle these challenges.

By doing so we can help to tackle vocational snobbery head-on so more young people and their parents see apprenticeships and technical education as a route to a better start in work and life. Some 70 per cent of young people we engaged last year said they were inspired to take up a technical career, so delivering for them with high-quality training and exciting job opportunities is vital. 

And we can help to meet their expectations if we deliver a high-quality supply of skills because this is also crucial to attracting new firms to invest and create jobs in areas of the country they might not otherwise choose. The message from a recent EY report is that investors prioritise skills supply over many other factors when looking for a location for their capital. And attracting inward investment is important now just as it was in the early 1980s when the UK’s traditional industries were in decline and unemployment was high. Sunderland is still reaping the dividends of Nissan’s investment in the area 40 years later, with a recent investment of £400 million helping to sustain 6,000 jobs. Investors today are prioritising digital investment and need the high-quality skills to match.

As our economic landscape looks set to change, mainstreaming excellence should be the long-term goal for our skills systems. WorldSkills UK and our partners, many of whom work in areas of social and economic disadvantage, are committed. Because we believe that when young people succeed, we all succeed.

Dr Neil Bentley-Gockmann is the chief executive of WorldSkills UK