The skills needed for work in the 21^st century have been debated since this century began. The Partnership for 21^st century skills, established by leading multi-national companies including Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe, Ford, Dell and Pearson, set out to establish a framework for the 21^st century skills needed in the modern workplace. These, naturally, included the use of ICT and digital technologies, as well as those better known as 21^st century skills today such as critical thinking, creativity, and team working. The OECD adopted the concept in 2010 with Andreas Schleicher stating “educational success is no longer about reproducing content knowledge, but about extrapolating from what we know and applying that knowledge to novel situations” (https://www.oecd.org/general/thecasefor21st-centurylearning.htm).

Not all countries have adopted the language of 21^st century skills. However, many have adopted what we refer to here as ‘generic’ skills as part of their curriculums and values for education (OECD 2022). Apart from the OECD, other frameworks have been developed. For example, Skills Builder (https://www.skillsbuilder.org/) is used by employers, educators, and impact organisations across 10 countries including England, as it provides a useful framework to define skills. Eight essential skills are identified – listening; speaking; problem solving; creativity; staying positive; aiming high; leadership; and teamwork. Voogt and Roblin (2012) highlighted the key common skills as being ICT literacy, collaboration, communication, social and culturalskills, with a majority also including creativity, critical thinking and problem solving.

Although 21^st century skills are often related to children in compulsory schooling through curricula, the academic literature focuses on them in the context of those skills required by graduates transitioning into the modern workplace. Similarly, large scale quantitative research on the changing skills needed in job roles is driven by the availability of the comprehensive US-based O*NET taxonomy. To enable this more locally, England has been reviewing skills taxonomies (Popov et al, 2022) in preparation for developing its own version. 21^st century skills therefore, despite mostly being delivered to children and young people during compulsory education, are mainly researched in the context of being skills for work.

Our research focuses instead on the generic skills taught to young people aged 14-19. We review how generic skills are delivered to 14–19-year-olds across a range of jurisdictions focusing particularly here on England, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Scotland. We structure our analysis around four key factors: the systems and structures; the formation and enactment of policy; the educational and vocational cultures and traditions; and the education and status of teachers. We find that policy coherence and the professional status of teachers is crucial for the effective and consistent teaching and learning of generic skills to 14-19 year olds.

Across the four countries there is significant variation in the extent that generic skills are incorporated into the curriculum and how far this is a central curriculum design consideration and  how far it is secondary. Policy coherence includes incorporating generic skills into the 14-19 curriculum at the same time as making sure they are part of a more general shift to adopt generic skills in other parts of the curriculum. For example, in Scotland, the Curriculum for Excellence was initially devised in 2004 and has been refreshed in 2019. The most recent version retains the explicit reference to skills, stating that young people are entitled to experience ‘opportunities for developing skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work’ (Scottish Government, 2019).

Initially, we drew on an OECD review of curriculum framework and visualisations (OECD 2022) to scope different approaches and components used to address generic skills and core educational values in the curriculum. Informed by this, we undertook a comparative review of the generic skills taught to 14–19-year-olds across a selection of jurisdictions. For the purposes of this paper, we focus on England, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Scotland as representing different relationships to ways generic skills are addressed (or not) in the 14-19 curriculum. In keeping with the policy review, we focused particularly on grey literature to understand the policies relevant to generic skills and their implementation. Our starting point was the country profiles and reviews of skills and curricula by the OECD, which led us to individual country or jurisdiction policy documents and other literature. As well as curriculum frameworks, the corpus included descriptions of teacher education content and processes relevant to the generic skills curriculum. We undertook additional searches to ensure relevant academic literature was also included. The analytical frame used for the comparative review began with a core and extended to consider four key factors. The first core part was a conceptual model comprising generic skills, subject and vocational skills and teaching and learning processes. Secondly, we considered the four key factors that influence the conception and implementation of skills in the 14-19 curriculum across each jurisdiction. These are: 1) the systems and structures, notably the curricula and qualifications and the organisation of schools or colleges for 14-19 years olds; 2) the formation and enactment of policy, including policy mechanisms, and influences over policy; 3) the educational and vocational cultures and traditions, particularly the perception of vocational versus academic education, and any social or economic change in the jurisdiction; and 4) the education and status of teachers, considering both their initial teacher education and the extent to which teachers are valued professionals with agency and autonomy over the skills curriculum. Applying this frame, we generated a country case study mapped to the analytical frame and then undertook a comparative analysis across countries. In this presentation we focus particularly on the influence of the second and fourth of these factors.

We find that teacher education and professionalism influence the conception and implementation of skills at 14-19 in all jurisdictions. However some countries, including England, have particular issues around the 16-18 stage or equivalent age when the division between vocational and academic learning begins. The generic skills identified within the paper have been widely adopted, with some variation, suggesting they will influence the experience of learners around the world, and so possibly workforce skills globally in the future. The ability to shape and adapt the teaching and learning of these skills for 14-19 year olds, firmly establishing the value of the teacher, enabled more acceptance of the need for these skills, and ensured young people learnt them, as far as we can tell. Singapore, for example, adopted a clear approach, encouraged teachers to deliver it, and ensured widespread acceptance. Conversely in Scotland, a new approach based on 21st century skills, has patchy adoption and is being reviewed. The incorporation of generic skills in the curriculum is relatively recent and so policy coherence is needed to support their adoption amongst teachers already in the profession, as well as new staff. The policy must also be fully implemented by teachers with the professional status and autonomy to weave generic skills into their teaching and learning in ways that best suit their own teaching approach and the needs of their students. Policy coherence helps to give teachers confidence in the policy, but the nature of generic skills, as opposed to subject content, means the teacher, and their educational organisation (school, college, etc.), has more control over the style of delivery. Combining a high status for teachers and policy coherence, we argue, leads to the effective delivery of skills for 14-19 learners.

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