Helping you get the most out of your education and training

Having the information and tools to help identify and access the right education and training for your staff is crucial. A greater understanding of suitable learning opportunities can reduce cost and time wasted on inappropriate development programmes. Ultimately, it can support the delivery of a flexible and productive workforce, with reduced skills gaps and improved skills levels, contributing to safer, effective, high quality patient care.

Whether you need help with understanding the qualifications systems, providing effective advice to support staff learning and development, or identifying potential funding options, we can help. Get in touch with your regional or country director to find out how we can help you.

As the Sector Skills Council for health, we work closely with Awarding Organisations and education providers to champion demand-led qualifications and training.

For more information on our strategic work, see the Sector Qualification Strategy (SQS) (2011) or Executive summary and the SQS Action Plans for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which set out the sector’s requirements for vocational qualifications in healthcare and ensure that these are designed by and for the sector. The Learning Design Principles (2011) that underpin Skills for Health’s approach to learning design can be found in our Sector Qualifications Strategy.

Find out about the range of competence-based vocational qualifications and Apprenticeships available within the health sector and how they can benefit you and your organisation.

We also offer a wide range of practical tools, solutions and support to help you equip your staff with the qualifications you need, whilst ensuring training is flexible, relevant, benefits your staff and delivers better healthcare.

Designing your own education and training

See also our Careers Information, Advice and Guidance pages which offer a wealth of advice and resources to help you develop your staff and improve the careers advice and support you provide.

The learner engagement strategy provides a framework for employers to help develop a systematic approach to learner engagement. It has been designed to be used flexibly to support local need, but essentially it aims to help employers to create a learning culture and engage learners in influencing the quality of their learning.

How to commission the education and training you need

The Education Commissioning Briefing helps you understand how education and training is commissioned and your role in influencing this process. The partnership between employers, education and training providers and education commissioners is vital for achieving quality health services.

Commissioning high quality vocational education and learning provides a practical framework and guidance on how to plan, procure and measure the impact of training at Career Framework levels 1-4.

Securing funding

The Staff Learning and Development - Funding Guidance for Employers interactive online guide helps you quickly identify potential funding sources to support training, recruitment and retention.

How to identify high-quality education and training

The 'Enhancing Quality in Partnership' (EQuIP) framework provides a standardised, evidence-based Quality Assurance (QA) model for healthcare education. The framework is a guiding set of principles and requirements for those involved in healthcare education. The intention is to drive improvements in quality of learning, reduce the amount of paperwork to show compliance and reduce duplication of effort.