The government should “incentivise and support” schools to promote the development of skills like communication, organisation and problem-solving through its curriculum review, a report has said.
A study led by the National Foundation for Educational Research suggested that if “cognitive and behavioural” skills gaps are identified and addressed during education, this could support “improved labour market outcomes”.
According to the research, inequalities in cognitive and behavioural outcomes in young children “become more entrenched and harder to impact as they get older”.
However, the report “stresses that there remains considerable scope to influence young people’s outcomes at an older age, and that with the appropriate support, they can catch-up”.
It urges government to “incentivise and support schools to develop the six essential employment skills”, or EES.
These are communication, collaboration, problem-solving, organising, planning and prioritising work, creative thinking and information literacy.
Consider a ‘single framework’
An expert panel is currently conducting a review of the curriculum and assessment system.
The report said through this review, government should “explore whether and how more emphasis could be placed on the development of EES, as crucial in their own right and as conducive to the activation and application of subject-specific knowledge”.
This could include embedding standards and competencies into curriculum guidance, or producing materials to support schools to develop such skills.
The government “should also consider developing a single framework that can be used by schools for benchmarking and tracking young people’s progress in developing these skills, or alternatively validating and adopting an existing framework”.
A previous NFER study predicted workers would need to use EES “more intensively in jobs by 2035″. But up to seven million workers “could lack the required level of EES to carry out these roles”.
‘Cradle to grave’ approach needed
Jude Hillary, the programme’s principal investigator and NFER’s co-head of UK policy and practice, said: “Intervening at an early age to support young people who have low cognitive and behavioural skills and are at risk of falling behind is critical to improving their future outcomes.
“The consequence of inaction could see increasing numbers of young people leaving education without the skills and qualifications they need to enter growing occupations, which are predominantly professional occupations requiring higher skills, particularly EES.
“This will only add to the existing skills shortages in the UK and further constrain national efforts to stimulate growth.”
He said the government must adopt a “cradle to grave approach to skills development, promoting the development of a broad mix of cognitive, behavioural, and technical specific knowledge and skills, starting from the early years”.
The report found differences in school performance “can compound inequalities in children’s cognitive and behavioural outcomes that predate their start at school”.
Evaluate the effect of school improvement schemes
Ministers recently set out plans to reform school accountability, with grants of up to £100,000 to turn around so-called “stuck” schools.
To ensure this money is effectively spent, it is “crucial that government and other research funders continue to invest in robust, long-term evaluations of the effects of school improvement programmes and packages of support”, the NFER said.
The report also found extra-curricular engagement was “positively associated with their behavioural and cognitive development between the ages of eight and 17, but it is well documented that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have less access to these opportunities”.
Government should therefore support “more disadvantaged young people to access extra-curricular activities more frequently…for example by providing additional funding to schools with disadvantaged intakes to extend the school day or by introducing a national extra-curricular bursary scheme”.
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the ASCL leaders’ union, hopes the ongoing curriculum and assessment review “will better balance the previous government’s excessive focus on a small number of academic subjects with more room for vocational, digital and creative subjects – which nurture many of the skills sought by employers”.
