It is always satisfying to be able to celebrate and publicly recognise outstanding performance by individuals and institutions that put equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at the forefront of all that they do in education and training.
UVAC is delighted, once again, to be a headline partner of WorldSkillsUK’s EDI Heroes Awards 2025, associated with the Institution of the Year award. Especially as this is the 5th year of championing how providers and practitioners from across the world of work, higher and further education pick up the baton and continue the progress towards increased and meaningful levels of social impact.
For the delivery of apprenticeships and skills programmes, equity and belonging should also be explored, in the context of understanding and acknowledging that some learners and apprentices need different or greater resources – and treatment more broadly – than others. To fully leverage apprenticeships and skills training for social mobility and EDI, we must do more to support individuals from underrepresented backgrounds to access their next level of learning and higher paid careers.
Promoting diversity and inclusion, equity and belonging, in our learner cohort is crucial for recognising individuality. The EDI Heroes Awards is a brilliant opportunity to celebrate and support our EDI champions and professionals who work diligently to create and identify models of best practice that lead to fair and fairer outcomes. Past winners demonstrate how they creatively disrupt existing practices to ensure effective interventions promote inclusion and involvement. Without a doubt, the WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence, in partnership with NCFE, has been instrumental in transferring its knowledge of global industry standards by creating a cohort of world-class educators to help ensure that more and more young people get to benefit from world-class skills. Being open to all further education (FE) colleges, independent training providers, and higher educational (HE) institutions throughout the UK brings full recognition of a system that benefits from leadership, learning and inclusive cultures across FE and HE in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion.
The EDI Heroes Awards are relatable to all those tutors, trainers, lecturers, principals, employers, competition organising partners, judges, training managers and performance coaches, who, in the world of UK competitions and practitioner development, look to remove barriers to entry and participation. However, the scale of the diversity challenge is not to be underestimated, still.
UVAC’s contribution towards WorldSkillsUK’s Competitor Support Fund is also a way of demonstrating that commitment. The fund is aimed at breaking down barriers for young people so that people of all backgrounds can access life-changing opportunities by competing on a regional, national, and international stage. Experiences that can lead to national and international applause following the medallion success at events like WorldSkills Lyon and growth in foundation skills competitions to inspire early careers or showcase the skills of students with learning difficulties. We know that we must widen the gate and raise the bar for all, as was highlighted in WorldSkillsUK’s report, ‘Championing difference for a better workforce’, which identified some of the barriers faced by young people from under-represented groups accessing competitor programmes.
UVAC’s ambition (still) is to get more universities to use skills competitions to shape curriculum programmes. Skills competitions have already proved a successful recruitment tool for FE, which use their involvement and success to promote their training courses, and universities can do the same particularly to attract more young people, from all backgrounds. WorldSkills UK’s successful long-term partnership with Middlesex University highlights the many benefits for HE institutions engaging in skills competitions and the University of Exeter’s recent launch of a WorldSkills competition for its undergraduate degree apprentices is so, so gratifying. Working to innovate and to mainstream excellence by embedding global best practice in skills curriculum to boost training standards to help the UK economy succeed, led by some of the foremost universities in the world, must be the aim. FE colleges, universities and independent training providers are using the WorldSkills UK competition methodology to stretch learners and help them develop the high-level skills that employers are looking for. It makes the prospect of judging this year’s EDI Heroes Awards all the more exciting.
WorldSkills UK Announces Higher Education Partnership with UVAC
