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FE News Exclusive

FE News Exclusive

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 Exclusive thought leadership articles written peer to peer by leading experts about the future of education and the future of work. Experts writing op’ed and thought leadership articles on apprenticeships, skills and employability. 政治・政府
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  • How Micro-Credentials Can Conquer the Skills Gap

    How Micro-Credentials Can Conquer the Skills Gap
    2023/05/09
    In this article, Danny King offers insight into how stackable micro-credentials can help employers upskill their teams while steering employees toward their individual career goals.According to a 2021 study, over 80% of Scottish employees had never heard the term “micro-credential”. And while a surge in skills-based hiring has likely caused that percentage to shrink, for many leaders, the true value of these stackable skill credentials lies shrouded in mystery.A micro-credential is a single credential representing proficiency in a given skill, typically after a single course. When stacked with other similar credentials, micro-credentials can be accumulated together, roll into more comprehensive badges or certifications, and even help build long-term career pathways.In 2022, 78% of UK organisations experienced a decline in output, profitability and/or growth due to a lack of available skills, indicating a dire need for deeper investment in skills development. But while corporate training programs abound, the flexibility inherent to micro-credentials makes them especially attractive. Workers can complete courses at a reasonable pace without jeopardising day-to-day work, and with stackable micro-credentials, it becomes easier for leaders to rank individual proficiencies and monitor overall skills growth in the workforce.In the Learning & Development space, we speak often about “bridging the skills gap.” But no bridge is built without a surefire blueprint. Thus, the key is to help each individual create their distinct plan for career success. By this logic, we aren’t so much “bridging” the gap as we are enabling employees to find their own way across.I break this process down into four phases of the learning journey:Choosing the DestinationWhen choosing to pursue a micro-credential on their own, rather than under a company mandate, learners typically have two goals to consider: personal goals and organisational goals. The former is self-explanatory: They take courses related to their individual career goals, and if they’re outside the domain of their current position, they may have to fund them themselves. The latter, however, is where we’re going to focus. Organisational learning goals may be related to a role one wants in the company – i.e. “I want to learn SEO so I can create better company blog content and improve our lead generation” – or, they could be part of a larger effort to upskill the workforce in a diversity of ways.To this end, corporate L&D programs should employ micro-credentials to allow employees to pursue both personal and organisational goals at the same time. This can happen through a subscription to a learning platform that gives employees access to vast catalogue of micro-credentialed courses, or a learning stipend that empowers workers to pursue courses outside of their assigned training modules. In order to optimise costs and save time, organisations should do their diligence to identify overlaps between employees’ personal learning interests and the needs of the company. Employers can conduct surveys and solicit feedback from managers about not only employees’ current skill levels and performance, but also their interests and goals.Most importantly, before anyone sets out on their next learning journey, organisations must ensure that the micro-credentials they provide, whether through a third party or internally, are secure and verifiable, so employees get the premium value out of their experience. They should choose micro-credentials that offer a digital badge or certificate as immutable proof of a learner’s accomplishments. This will prove useful to both internal teams and as a means of external marketing of your skilled workforce.Setting CourseWhen employees and organisations have their goals in harmony, the next step is to determine what courses these intrepid learners must take to reach these goals.
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    4 分
  • Adding ‘world’ into WorldSkills UK – establishing an international focus for standards

    Adding ‘world’ into WorldSkills UK – establishing an international focus for standards
    2023/05/09
    Adding ‘world’ into WorldSkills UK – establishing an international focus for standardsAs he prepares to step down from his role as Chief Executive at WorldSkills UK after seven years, Neil Bentley-Gockmann reflects on how WorldSkills UK is using international benchmarking to define excellence in technical education and apprenticeships, so more young professionals, from all backgrounds, can succeed.The announcement that the UK had just won its 20 th medal at the WorldSkills 2017 Competition , was barely audible as cheers sounded out across Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Park. For me, that was my defining moment as Chief Executive. A ‘light bulb’ instant at my first international competition, when I realised that Team UK’s success was more than just a medal haul. It could be used to help better prepare more young people, educators and employers to succeed.With this in mind, I laid out a new vision for WorldSkills UK, rooted in our knowledge of how other countries use skills policy for economic development, to champion a world-class skills economy in the UK. The skills economy is a concept in which governments, employers, parents and young people recognise being highly skilled as a valuable currency for success. It also acknowledges the potential of technical skills to power economic growth.I wanted to establish an organisation where we always tried to lead from the front. I wanted us to be an ‘incubator of new ideas’ and in setting out the new vision I realised we had to focus on three key areas.LESSONS FROM GLOBAL BEST PRACTICE – CENTRE OF EXCELLENCEFirstly, we needed to create a vehicle to effectively disseminate our learnings from our international benchmarking at WorldSkills. Born out of my experience at WorldSkills Abu Dhabi in 2017 and founded on research undertaken by the University of Oxford, we launched the Centre of Excellence in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. At a time, when our day-to-day work was paused, we had the opportunity to innovate and I will always be grateful to David Gallagher of NCFE for believing and investing in the concept , during what was an uncertain time for us all.We were amazed by the level of interest from the FE sector in this new programme and to date 49 institutions are part of the Centre of Excellence, with 31 situated in the government’s levelling up priority regions. Mainstreaming best practice and world-class standards from the WorldSkills global network, the Centre is helping institutions across the UK raise standards and embed excellence across curriculums. In England, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is interested in the impact of this work, and we are actively linking our insights to the development of standards in apprenticeships and other qualifications. Ofsted has also recognised the value of competition-based training in their education inspection framework in England, citing their value in demonstrating outstanding behaviours and attitudes.It is fantastic to hear that 83% of members have said that it has motivated them to make positive changes to improve their teaching and training practice. We are working with NCFE to launch the next phase of the Centre of Excellence and are inviting ITPs and Higher Education Institutes to apply to help ensure more organisations and young people across the four nations can benefit from our international benchmarking.HELPING TO MEET RAPIDLY CHANGING EMPLOYER NEEDS TO SUPPORT ECONOMIC GROWTHSecondly, we repositioned our programmes, informed by diagnostic research, to focus on the future skills needed to help power the economy, in line with priorities set by governments across the UK at a time of fast moving technological change.That’s why we are focusing more of our programmes on STEM skills at higher levels in areas such as industry 4.0, cyber security, industrial robotics, additive manufacturing and renewable energy. We have already seen international success, winning the bronze medal in industry 4.0 at last year’s W...
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    6 分
  • Securing Education: How Resource-Strapped Colleges Can Fight Back Against Cyber-Attacks

    Securing Education: How Resource-Strapped Colleges Can Fight Back Against Cyber-Attacks
    2023/05/10
    In this article, Andy Le Grice outlines the challenges that UK colleges currently face in securing their institutions against cyber-attack, and the potential steps they can take to effectively improve their security posture within the tight constraints of the Further Education sector.It’s no wonder that cyber security is front of mind for much of the Education sector. According to the government’s recently-published Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2023, more than four in five UK colleges have identified breaches or attacks within the last 12 months, with roughly a third reporting such incidents occurring on a weekly basis.This is clearly an unsustainable situation, and one that’s partially due to the low security posture that colleges have traditionally held. However, as resources and personnel continue to be stretched at many institutions, it’s not a problem with an immediately obvious solution.Strengthening Cybersecurity in Further EducationAs a technology consultancy specialising in the public sector, we at ITGL are very aware of the tight budget constraints that colleges face, and how the continuing global deficit in cyber professionals has resulted in a skills gap across the industry.To help bolster the security posture of the Further Education sector, we‘re holding a free digital event on 18th May 2023, highlighting the most common and urgent vulnerabilities present in institutions’ defences, as well as demonstrating best practices and proactive steps that colleges can take to better secure their networks and infrastructure, ensuring that their limited resources are managed to receive the best possible return on investment.Colleges are, by design, very open institutions. On any given day, they will be providing network access to hundreds – or thousands – of students, faculty, guests, and staff. This ease of access is vital for the day-to-day operation of the college, but left unmanaged it can also leave them open to the possibility of attacks that originate from inside their networks.Network access controls can be implemented across an institution’s networks to directly combat this; users and devices can be authenticated and authorised before they are granted access to the network at any level, ensuring that only trusted users can access more sensitive resources. At the same time, users without the same level of authorisation – such as students and guests – can be filtered onto a more public-facing network designed for such devices.Posture checks can continuously be made on devices, ensuring that compromised devices are kept off sensitive networks, while improving the security posture of those devices that are connected, by requiring that firewalls are enabled, operating systems and browsers are updated, and endpoint security is active.The Threat of Phishing in Further EducationWhile colleges often aren’t seen as high-value targets for complex or sophisticated cyber-attacks, the frequency with which they experience an attempted breach or attack shows that a sufficiently low-security posture can be reason enough for outside threats to act. Phishing is so prevalent in modern life that its presence in Further Education is no surprise – in the previously referenced Cyber Security Breaches Survey, 91% of colleges that had identified breaches or attacks reported that phishing was among the methods used.The positive side of this news is that, because the vast majority of phishing occurs via email, some basic steps can make a substantial difference in this regard. By utilising best practices when setting up an institution’s email services (such as implementing the DMARC email standard, and the application of threat intelligence and content analysis), the volume of malware and phishing emails that make it to a user’s inbox can be cut drastically. When combined with consistent, clear end-user training and good cyber awareness, the effectiveness of phishing as an attack vector is diminished further.Of course, we recognise that all o...
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    4 分
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