Essential skills and their impact on education outcomes: a quantitive analysis of the British Cohort Study

Essential skills are those highly transferable skills (listening, speaking, teamwork, leadership, creativity, problem-solving, aiming high, and staying positive) that everyone needs to do almost any job, and which support the application of specialist knowledge and technical skills. Essential skills matter and helping people develop them is a job for schools and colleges from the earliest age. The Skills Builder Universal Framework, launched in May 2020, sets out this framework of eight essential skills, providing a common language in which skills are described, understood and measured,...  [+] Show more

Essential skills are those highly transferable skills (listening, speaking, teamwork, leadership, creativity, problem-solving, aiming high, and staying positive) that everyone needs to do almost any job, and which support the application of specialist knowledge and technical skills. Essential skills matter and helping people develop them is a job for schools and colleges from the earliest age. The Skills Builder Universal Framework, launched in May 2020, sets out this framework of eight essential skills, providing a common language in which skills are described, understood and measured, and recognisable to both employers and educators.

This research aims to make a contribution to the gaps in the existing research base, particularly of longitudinal studies of the interplay of essential skills and other outcomes over time. Using the rich longitudinal data provided by the British Cohort Study (1970), with a particular focus on children and young people, the analysis shows a strong association between scores in essential skills and measures of literacy and numeracy at the ages of both 10 and 16, and a further association with career aspirations at age 16.

Edited excerpts from publication.