The latest WorldSkills UK Productivity Lab event – Mainstreaming excellence in skills through workforce development – took place today (12 May 2020) via Zoom.
The event focussed on how we can build up our technical education workforce to deliver excellence in skills for students and apprentices throughout the UK.
Speakers at the online roundtable event included:
• Bev Robinson OBE, Chief Executive and Principal, Blackpool and The Fylde College
• Neil Bates, Managing Director, Technical Professional Education Ltd
• Ben Blackledge, Deputy Chief Executive, WorldSkills UK
• Chair, Dr Neil Bentley-Gockmann OBE, Chief Executive, WorldSkills UK
The event brought together leaders in education, senior policy-makers and employers for a wide-ranging and open discussion about workforce development in the technical education sector.
Bev Robinson from Blackpool and The Fylde College spoke about her perspective on workforce development as a college leader. She discussed the college’s approach to workforce development, which includes praising and celebrating the sharing of new industry knowledge in team meetings and the importance of learning from the best around the world.
This was followed by Neil Bates from Technical Professional Education Ltd who spoke about his report: A World-class Workforce for World-class Skills: The case for a national institute for technical teaching and regional knowledge centres, which examined the key ingredients of a world-class skills system and how we could adopt them in the UK, including mainstreaming pockets of excellence.
Ben Blackledge then spoke about the recently launched WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence, in partnership with NCFE, which is designed to mainstream excellence and enable teaching staff in colleges to learn international best practice from WorldSkills UK’s skills experts.
