Executive summary, introduction and acknowledgements
Published 27 November 2025
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Executive summary
The concept of ‘skill’ underpins employment, education, and training systems. However, the absence of a unified national skills classification has limited the UK’s ability to analyse, communicate, and act consistently on skill-related information. To address this, Skills England, working with the Institute for Employment Research (IER) and other partners, has developed the UK Standard Skills Classification (SSC). The SSC provides a coherent framework and a common language for describing the skills, tasks, and knowledge required across the labour market.
This report presents progress from Phase Two of the project, building on design work completed in 2023. It sets out the SSC’s structure, methodological approach, and potential applications, as well as plans for ongoing maintenance and future development.
The SSC is structured as a four-level hierarchy comprising 22 Skill Domains, 106 Skill Areas, 606 Skill Groups, and 3,343 Occupational Skills. Each Occupational Skill is linked to associated Tasks, Core Skills, and Knowledge concepts. This design enables detailed mapping between skills, occupations, qualifications, and wider frameworks, ensuring both depth and comparability. Core Skills are also defined, capturing generic, transferable abilities valued across sectors.
Development of the SSC combined artificial intelligence (AI) methods, expert validation, and stakeholder engagement. Task, skill, and knowledge statements were drawn from multiple datasets including the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS), the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), the US Occupational Information Network (O*NET), Higher Education Coding of Subjects (HECoS), and vacancy data. They were then refined, clustered and quality assured. AI models were used to generate embeddings, cluster concepts, and propose labels, while manual reviews ensured accuracy, reliability, and UK relevance.
The SSC is designed as a versatile tool:
- for employers, it supports workforce planning, recruitment, and training design
- for individuals and careers services, it highlights transferable skills, training needs, and career pathways
- for local labour market analysts and training providers, it enables more responsive planning and curriculum development
To remain fit for purpose, the SSC will require regular monitoring and revision. Updates will reflect changes in the labour market, education provision, and terminology. Continuous monitoring (such as through vacancy data, foresighting activities, and employer feedback) will identify emerging skills, while structural revisions will be scheduled on a multi-year cycle.
Looking ahead, there are opportunities to extend the SSC by adding proficiency levels, developing open curricula, creating sector-specific profiles, and refining AI tools for large-scale skill extraction. These enhancements will strengthen the SSC’s role in improving the quality and consistency of skills data available to policymakers, employers, and learners.
Overall, the SSC represents a step-change in the UK’s approach to skills classification. By providing a standardised, evidence-based framework, it will enable more effective decision-making across employment, education, and training, supporting both national and regional priorities.
Introduction
The concept of ‘skill’ is central to understanding many aspects of work, from the roles individuals perform and the qualifications they hold, to the dynamics of labour markets and the design of training programmes. It also plays a key role in recruitment practices and career guidance. However, despite its widespread use, the UK has lacked a unified system for classifying skills that serves the diverse needs of stakeholders such as employers, job seekers, careers advisors, training providers, and labour market analysts.
This absence of a standardised framework has made it difficult to communicate and analyse skill-related information consistently across employment, education, and policy contexts. The SSC seeks to address this gap by providing a coherent structure that accurately reflects the skills and knowledge required in the UK workforce. By establishing a common language for skills, the SSC will support more effective decision-making in recruitment, training, career development, and labour market analysis.
This report represents Phase Two of the project and outlines the development of the SSC, building on the design work completed during Phase One in 2023 and described in the report ‘A Skills Classification for the UK: Plans for development and maintenance’. The project was funded by the Department for Education (DfE).
The report is organised into 6 main sections, each addressing a key aspect of the development and implementation of the SSC.
Following this introduction, this report introduces the SSC, detailing its overall structure, the definitions and classification principles that underpin it, the logic behind its hierarchical design, and how it maps to existing frameworks.
It explores potential use cases, illustrating how the SSC can support various stakeholders across employment, education, and policy domains.
It summarises the methodology used to construct the classification, including the identification of Occupational Tasks, Skills, Core Skills, and Knowledge concepts, as well as unexpected issues encountered during development.
It then outlines the approach to updating the SSC to ensure it remains relevant and responsive to changes in the labour market.
Finally, it discusses opportunities for extending the SSC in the future.
Acknowledgements
This report has been developed by:
- Neil Bachelor, Omnifolio C.I.C.
- Jeisson Cardenas Rubio, Warwick Institute for Employment Research
- Rosie Day, Warwick Institute for Employment Research
- Andy Dickerson, University of Sheffield
- Peter Elias, Warwick Institute for Employment Research
We would like to thank our project managers, Chloe Newbury, Rosalind Holden, Jane Evans and Ali Kirk of Skills England for their support and expert advice throughout the research and reporting process. We are also grateful for the advice and guidance received from our Advisory Group over the course of the project.
In addition, we thank all those others who generously shared their data and expertise, including IfATE, AGCAS, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Enginuity, Skillsbuilder, Innovate UK Workforce Foresighting Hub (WFH) and the National Careers Service (NCS). Finally, we acknowledge use of ESCO and O*NET under a CC-BY-4.0 licence.