Jennifer Coupland on Devolved Skills: How IfATE is Adapting to Local Skills Needs

We catch up with Jennifer Coupland, Chief Executive of IfATE at the Federation of Awarding Bodies annual conference (#FAB2024).

We chat with Jennifer Coupland about Devolved Skills and what this means for the future of the FE + Skills Sector. Jennifer explains that what IfATE have been thinking about to support the Government’s aims to support devolution and local skills is to look at flexibility within a framework. She explains that over the past seven years we have built Occupational Maps that set out the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for a whole range of different occupations across the economy. IfATE have been then thinking how to use these as a foundation to meet employers needs with Apprenticeships, or short courses or microcredentials to give a degree of flexibility to meet local skills needs.

We then discuss some very interesting exploratory work with the West Midlands Combined Authority and meeting their local skills needs, and address skills gaps for a certain suite of qualifications in the Med Tech sector and how this could be a framework for meeting future local skills needs.

Check out the full interview below and what Jennifer has to say about meeting local skills needs and flexibilities: