ARISE wins the Ufi VocTech Trust VocTech Future of Skills Award 2023! 
The VocTech Future of Skills Award is a new competition to share and celebrate big, tech-enabled ideas of how changes to the UK skills system could transform the way adults get the skills they need for work.
Award entrants were asked to answer a single question:
“If you could make one change to the skills system to get more adults learning, what would it be?”
The judge considered that BelfastMET entry “the central idea underlining this entry is that all learning ‘transactions’ have a value associated. As new skills are developed, they can be ‘cashed in’ for accreditation. A universal value of micro-credentials helps learners, employers and training providers have a shared ‘currency’ to represent equivalence. The technology proposed is blockchain – which is mainstream, but appropriate.
The judges felt this was a provocative and bold vision for an innovative system that seeks to give greater learner agency, advance micro-credentialing and other flexible and modular forms of learning, and change the debate about the value of skills. They felt that it challenged thinking about the way skills are valued and the motivation and incentive for adults to learn. They believed it would provoke debate, elicit strong responses, and stimulate extensive engagement.”