Skills for Health Higher Education Strategy profiles innovative learning in England and Wales through Higher Education demonstrator sites.
This wide ranging strategy outlines a three year plan on how these sites can play a key role in bringing together education providers and employers. Through freely available and continuously evolving documents, the report maps out the products and services Skills for Health is developing and how they can be used in both learning provision and the support of new roles.
The development of these sites will support documents on guidance for higher education partnerships to develop relevant demand led educational pathways with multiple entry and exit points. Not only will this allow a wider audience to participate but it also structures local scope of practice and gives room for continuous development.
Working with our Quality Assurance Team will ensure that effective quality assurance and standards will also be created.
Currently there are 11 national demonstrator sites testing and evaluating a range of workforce development tools, with more being planned. This is being supported through a series of training and awareness workshops in how the tools can be best used in education and human resource management.
This educational support will also form the basis of partnerships between Skills for Health and four universities across the UK to validate and deliver postgraduate modules on the use of competences. These will help produce benchmarks in educational design using National Occupational Standards (NOS)/National Workforce Competences (NWC).
All the demonstrator sites must follow specific design principles incorporated into a supporting document - Awards/Qualifications Scheme. This illustrates a model to work to and allows employers to identify what is specifically needed, by who and what skills they will require to carry out that job. Building on from that an educational pathway can be created through the use of competences, teaching and assessment - both structured and flexible.
The Higher Education Strategy document has also received wide support from organisations not involved as demonstrator sites. Links are also being forged with lifelong learning networks and Foundation Degree Forward, an organisation that promotes the development of high quality foundation degrees.
This has led to the creation of a national network infrastructure to incorporate and train local site project facilitators to support local site development - and each other.
