Emerging Skills Programme in electrification for the Department for Education

Tender description

Background: 'Emerging Skills' are defined as those related to 'Emerging Technologies' and necessary to exploit their application in industry as they become widespread. The technologies themselves may have existed for some time or be cutting-edge, but their diffusion into industry is at an early stage, with low take-up ahead of wide-scale adoption. Examples include industrial digitalisation technologies such as additive manufacturing, robotics, AI, electrification and advanced materials. Following January's Skills for Jobs White Paper, we launched the first Emerging Skills Project in partnership with the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and the Institutes of Technology. This project uses the Skills Value Chain approach to stimulate the adoption of cutting-edge skills in a given sector. The Skills Value Chain is made up of three core activities, delivered collaboratively in succession: - Foresighting, an activity that forecasts emerging skills in a sector and identifies the gap in current provision and future need. - Development of open license training content to meet the gaps identified in foresighting. - Skills Diffusion, which consists of: o 'Train the trainer' days. o Provision of no-charge trainee days to upskill employees in the new emerging skills training content. In addition to announcing the first Emerging Skills Project, the White Paper also explored whether this Skills Value Chain approach can be used in other emerging skills areas and to support Government priorities such as net zero. The focus for this second, net-zero project, is electrification. This project will provide some of the skills needed to deliver Point 4 of the Government's ten-point plan for a Green Industrial Revolution - accelerating the shift to zero emission vehicles. This procurement exercise is to put in place a contract to deliver the second two activities of the Skills Value Chain. The first activity, foresighting, will be delivered through a separate agreement. The services required are: 1. Development of short courses to meet emerging skills needs in electrification using the outputs from foresighting conducted in the Summer 2021. 2. Training and other necessary support of teaching staff in chosen providers to teach the courses developed at (1) through 'train the trainer' training days. 3. Delivery of courses developed at (1) to learner through the upskilling days for employees in the sector. As the Skills Value Chain requires collaboration between organisations, we would expect bids to demonstration collaborative working.