A National Framework of Human Skills

Education fails to deliver because it is focused entirely on the wrong priorities.

The world is changing, and the way we learn needs to adapt. It is no longer enough to deliver knowledge and technical skills. We need to be proactive in optimising the advantage people have in the world of work, which is our humanity.

Most jobs that offer lifetime employment opportunities are gone. Robots and machines have replaced the demand for mass employment of production staff. Bots and online buying portals have replaced the demand for swathes of customer service and sales call centre operatives. Even content creation for the internet can now be done by a piece of software, proven to be as human-sounding as most people and without the copy errors.

Currently, the technology we create still requires the imagination of the human mind. The creativity of organic brains defines the limits of possibilities in the machines we design.

Machines have also yet to find a way to replace a nurse or a primary school teacher successfully. The technology is limited in its ability to show compassion and empathy.

People also can inspire and influence. Wisdom is more than knowing how to follow the right processes; leaning into intuition and instinct plays a part.

To have a competitive advantage in the future, we need to develop our humanity. We need to take the innate qualities we possess and constantly develop these, fulfilling our potential as people.

And learning needs to be redesigned to provide the groundworks that enable all to continue this daily evolution.

Our obsession with STEM or STEAM and our fixation on literacy and numeracy has led to a population of people not prepared for the workplace. More urgently, they are not ready for an ever-changing future.

We need to refocus our attention on our humanity. We need a National Framework of Human Skills delivered consistently throughout education and as a focal point for continuing professional and personal development. With a framework, the social currency of a shared language, we can help every individual turn innate qualities into powerful assets.

Let’s help our young people learn how to be reliable and resilient. Let’s optimise our ability for kindness and for being expressive. Let’s take our ability to be visionary and be influential and change the world for the better. We can do this by refocusing learning on our innate qualities as people; our character.

Entelechy Academy has created the Be Do Become Framework.

Learn what you need to be
to do what needs to be done
to become what the world demands.