The 2023 Local Skills Improvement Plans highlight the need for specific transferable skills including creativity, critical thinking, communication, organisation, and time-management as a priority across all sectors. These skills are hard to achieve and measure. There needs to be a better way to measure progress towards them and provide learners with a record of examples and evidence to demonstrate these skills. If learners furthest from the labour market can develop and evidence these skills, they will be more competitive at interview and employable.
This project, developed by 12 central London council adult learning services, will create a user-friendly app for the development of transferable skills to ensure learners can measure and capture their progression. This app will be the next stage in a partnership helping learners into work. It will show evidence of learner achievement against each transferable skill and examples they can give to employers. The app will have built-in artificial intelligence and will summarise specific examples of the application of these skills, in a format that can be dropped into application forms or CVs, or into words that can be spoken at interview. Moreover, the overlaps between employability, wellbeing and community involvement are well-evidenced internationally, and the app will take a holistic view of these outcomes linked to the 5 Cs.
The aim of the project is not just to encourage learners in their educational journey, but also to help them build a portfolio that will enhance their employment prospects. For example, the app will allow learners to identify key terms in job searches and map those against the skills they are working towards. Linking potential new careers to the skills being acquired makes this a powerful tool for those furthest from the labour market.