Cambridge Regional College students practice the region’s most in-demand skills to boost employability

Cambridge Regional College (CRC) is the first college in Cambridgeshire to recognise the learning and development of soft skills through exclusive digital badges.

CRC has created five exclusive badges in collaboration with the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Region of Learning, Skills and Opportunity’s (CPRoLSO) digital platform XP, which aim to help students demonstrate how their time at CRC has developed their employability skills. The badges showcase the five most in-demand skills identified from an analysis of 500,000 job adverts in Cambridgeshire over two years, including communication, self-motivation, innovation, problem solving and digital skills.

CPRoLSO is a region-wide initiative launched in July 2022. It brings together local employers and education providers to recognise and reward informal learning and skills as well as provide new opportunities for young people, and aims to boost social mobility within the region.

Michelle Dowse, Deputy Principal, Cambridge Regional College said: “The launch of these digital badges is the latest development in our Personal Development Strategy focused on helping our students to be life, work and career ready. These badges recognise the additional opportunities that students undertake that develop their character, confidence, and resilience as part of their personal development.

“Our Personal Development Portfolio (PDP) focuses on five of the most in-demand employability skills in the region that employers are looking for. PDP badges will be awarded in recognition of students demonstrating these skills helping them to understand, articulate, and showcase them at interviews.”

The five badges offered by CRC are open exclusively to students who are actively participating in the college’s Personal Development offering. In the programme staff and students log student engagement in personal development activities, and these records are then transferred to digital badges on a termly basis which are made accessible to students via their own personal development portal. Digital badges are a new type of digital certificate which enables young people to track and display to future employers the skills they have gained through the varied learning experiences that take place outside the classroom, supporting them to pursue their future career.

CRC is one of the many learning providers already working with CPRoLSO to provide work and learning opportunities for young people across the region. The full badge collection offered by CRC can be viewed here. Additionally, if you’re interested in how to develop your own badges and provide learning and working opportunities for young people in the region, you can find out more information here.