Developing future skills is a global challenge. However, as governments warm to the idea of solving regional skills challenges with place-based solutions, island settings can offer some valuable insights. On 25th September, Edge hosted a session at the 2023 Island Innovation Summit – our fifth year at the event – to explore some examples of how island communities are providing the skills young people need for the future. Here’s a taste of what we learned.
Jersey: Data-driven skills forecasting
Stuart Penn, Head of Service at Skills Jersey, shared a new tool developed to aid the Jersey government in creating a supply and demand skill model that addresses present and future needs. The tool addresses skills demand and supply issues using labour market data from current job ads.
Skills Jersey can now pinpoint skills mismatches and enable decision-making. The tool also allows the organisation to drill down and identify which skills are missing from specific sectors. By altering the model’s inputs, they can also predict future growth sectors and the skills needed to support them. Supplementing this data with international insights about current skills trends, Skills Jersey is working with training providers and employers to determine the future skills that require priority funding.
Isle of Man: Adopting a lifelong learning initiative
Jan Gimbert from the Isle of Man Department of Education, Sport and Culture explained how the island is actively developing a new employability and careers framework. The education system has long valued vocational training but the new framework strategically integrates this into all curriculum stages, emphasising lifelong learning from primary to HE and beyond.
The new model can assist educational institutions in providing essential employability and careers education, allowing learners to make informed decisions about the future. Guided by the Essentials for Learning (E4L) curriculum statement – which provides broad parameters for schools to develop flexible, exciting and memorable learning experiences and dispositions – it hangs on four core principles. These are: learner centricity; a common 'lifelong learning skills language’ (to help learners communicate their skills better); enhancing self-awareness and opportunity recognition (following Ikigai principles); and ensuring learner entitlement to employability and careers education throughout their time in school and college.
Saaremaa, Estonia: Preventing brain drain through VET excellence
Neeme Rand is Headmaster of Kuressaare Ametikool, a regional training centre on Saaremaa in Estonia. Estonia offers free vocational education to all citizens, with the government routinely conducting market analyses to predict future skills needs. Saaremaa’s schools collaborate closely with the private sector, requiring students to undertake placements regardless of curriculum area.
Despite this, many young people leave the island at 16 to pursue opportunities elsewhere. To address this issue, Kuressaare Ametikool offers over 250 training courses in many fields, including technology, design, IT, tourism, and social care – all crucial to the island’s economy.
With 1,000 new jobs expected in the local green sector by 2050, the school is also actively introducing technical qualifications in emerging areas like wind turbine engineering. These programmes focus on sought-after technical skills, but also emphasise teamwork, problem-solving, and collaboration across curriculum areas. The aim is to enhance the transferability of learners' skills, increasing the likelihood that they will stay locally.
Guernsey: Designing a future-ready curriculum
Guernsey College of Further Education, the island’s sole post-16 VET provider, is undergoing essential curriculum modernisation to meet the island’s evolving skills needs. Jeanette Hart, Vice Principal, explained how their new curriculum emphasises employer engagement and aligns with the World Economic Forum's 2027 skills development priorities.
Students receive personalised career planning, with each vocational area offering clear development pathways. Lecturers also benefit from regular professional development opportunities to update their skills, ensuring they can deliver accurate, relevant instruction. Impressively, 98% of students achieved positive destinations last year, with 58% continuing to FE/HE and 40% entering employment or apprenticeships locally.
Trinidad & Tobago: Driving economic diversification through skills development
Trinidad and Tobago, a former British colony, faces economic challenges due to its declining earnings from the hydrocarbon economy, high youth unemployment, and high emigration rates. However, Dr. Keith Nurse, President of the island nation’s College of Science Technology and Applied Arts, is leading an economic transformation.
The college has recently expanded to six academic schools, offering over 100 programmes focused on applied, skills-based, and project-based learning. The notable addition of the School for Environment, Circular Economy, and Sustainability aligns with the college’s broader commitment to these areas. Furthermore, there is a renewed emphasis on strengthening STEAM subjects to drive essential economic innovation through skills development.
Moreover, the college's dedicated Upskilling Academy is fostering entrepreneurship, particularly in the creative industries, new media, digital, cybersecurity, and the circular economy – all pivotal in the Caribbean context. Additionally, the college operates a tech hub, facilitating prototyping, production commercialisation, digital content creation, and business coaching.
Barbados: Building capacity in VET delivery through regional coordination
CANTA (Caribbean Association of National Training Authorities) currently comprises 12 Caribbean member countries. Orlando Hewitt, representing the CANTA Secretariat at TVET Council Barbados, shared their mission to enhance the Caribbean workforce’s competitiveness, quality, and equity in training. Their goal is to develop a certified and globally competitive workforce.
This objective presents challenges, however, with many training authorities in the region at the early stages of VET delivery. However, CANTA is turning this problem on its head, seeing it instead as an opportunity to advocate, from the ground up, for competency-based training, assessment, certification, and a regional qualification scheme. They are now building the region’s digital capability too, so it can deliver more training and assessment activities online. Crucially, all this feeds into emerging skill areas, including the green, blue and digital economies and the creative industries.
Thanks to the speakers we learned that island settings – despite their size – can teach us a great deal about innovation and its crucial role in nurturing essential future skills, both on islands and in local settings on the mainland.
This #VIS2023 session was sponsored by the Edge Foundation and hosted by our Executive Director, Olly Newton.