A next-generation curriculum deserves a next-generation skills passport

How globalbridge’s three-year partnership with the CEO Futures Forum will support West Midlands Baccalaureate (WMBacc), strengthen student agency and help connect education with future opportunity.

How do we ensure young people leave education able to demonstrate what they know, what they can do and what they could become?

Qualifications remain fundamental. Alongside them, young people need meaningful experiences, opportunities to develop essential skills and the confidence to explain their strengths. Schools create these opportunities every day. The challenge is ensuring their value becomes visible, to students themselves, to their teachers and to the universities and employers considering their next steps.

Two recent national developments have brought that challenge into sharper focus.

Alan Milburn’s Young People and Work interim review highlights the urgent challenge of youth unemployment and the barriers preventing young people from entering employment. It raises a wider question for the next decade: how can we make emerging talent more visible and employment opportunities more accessible? We believe part of the answer lies in a different approach to evidencing skills, enabling young people to demonstrate their capabilities through a digital skills passport, employers to validate demonstrated skills through digital credentials, and recruitment to recognise potential alongside qualifications and previous employment.

Skills England’s new Employability Skills Framework addresses a related challenge: young people develop valuable capabilities through education and everyday life but can struggle to explain their relevance to employers. Published in October 2026, it provides a shared language around 13 core skills, drawing on established approaches including the Skills Builder Universal Framework.

Together, these developments strengthen the case for connecting curriculum, experience, skills development and evidence. That is the opportunity behind globalbridge’s three-year partnership with the CEO Futures Forum, supporting delivery of the WMBacc across all participating schools and Multi-Academy Trusts.

Turning forward-thinking education into practical action

Through WMBacc, the CEO Futures Forum and its participating Trusts are bringing academic learning together with technical, vocational and practical experiences. This approach creates opportunities for students to apply their knowledge, engage with employers and develop a clearer understanding of their futures.

The partnership with globalbridge adds an essential dimension: helping students capture what those experiences have enabled them to develop and achieve. A project becomes evidence of problem-solving. A presentation provides an example of communication. An employer encounter becomes an opportunity to reflect on skills, interests and future ambitions. Students can bring that learning together in a digital record of achievement, a skills passport that develops alongside them and that they can carry forward beyond school.

Three capabilities connecting curriculum with evidence

Customised enrichment and experiences reporting

Schools and Trusts can track participation in enrichment, employer engagement and wider experiences, helping them identify gaps in opportunity and target additional support.

This is particularly relevant to the inequalities highlighted by Milburn. Visibility of participation gives leaders a practical starting point for understanding who is missing out and where further opportunities are needed.

Customised digital badging

Schools, employers and authorised programme partners can recognise participation and validate achievement against agreed criteria.

These credentials give students lasting evidence of what they have completed or demonstrated, helping them communicate the value of their experiences when preparing for further study, training or employment.

The embedded Skills Builder Universal Framework

The embedded framework provides a shared language for essential skills, helping students connect curriculum learning and wider experiences with evidence of their development.

Skills Builder supports understanding and developing essential skills; globalbridge enables students to capture, evidence and showcase how they apply them.

Skills England’s Employability Skills Framework draws on Skills Builder alongside other approaches. This connection supports a more consistent conversation between education and employment, while recognising that the frameworks remain distinct.

Together, these capabilities connect the opportunities schools provide with the achievements students can demonstrate.

The next evolution of education data: from institutional intelligence to individual opportunity

We have spent decades building systems that help schools understand their students. The next generation of education technology should also help students understand, evidence and communicate their own potential.

Schools gather valuable information about young people’s learning, participation and achievements. Making relevant evidence available to students through their globalbridge skills passport gives that information a further purpose: supporting the individual’s next steps.

Through this partnership, WMBacc’s curriculum ambitions can translate into something students can see, reflect on and carry forward. Projects, employer encounters, enrichment and digital credentials become part of an evolving record that helps young people explain their strengths through concrete examples.

This is where evidence can support student agency.

When students recognise the skills they are developing, identify where they want to grow and choose evidence that demonstrates their achievements, they can take a more active role in their education and future decisions.

For schools and Trusts, reporting provides insight into participation and gaps in opportunity. For students, their skills passport provides evidence they can use in applications, interviews and conversations about their future.

The opportunity is to make education data useful throughout a young person’s journey, from informing school support to helping them demonstrate their potential beyond school.

Addressing the challenge before students leave school

The partnership’s contribution begins while young people are still in education.

WMBacc creates opportunities to connect learning with practical application. Skills Builder helps students understand the essential skills involved. globalbridge provides a place to gather evidence, recognise achievement and track participation.

Consider a student taking part in an employer-led design challenge. They can upload their work, reflect on their contribution, connect examples to relevant skills and receive a digital badge recognising achievement against agreed criteria. Their school can see who participated and identify students who need another opportunity. The student gains concrete examples to discuss in an application or interview, alongside a clearer understanding of what they can offer.

This addresses an important part of the transition challenge: ensuring young people have opportunities to develop their capabilities and useful evidence with which to communicate them.

Emily Verow, CEO of Three Spires Trust, said:

“WMBacc is about giving every young person an ambitious education that combines academic achievement with meaningful experiences and the skills to flourish.

“The national conversation about youth unemployment reinforces why this matters. Young people need opportunities to develop their capabilities and the confidence to demonstrate them.

“Our partnership with globalbridge brings those ambitions together. By embedding Skills Builder, recognising achievement through digital badges and tracking enrichment and experiences, we can help schools identify gaps in opportunity while giving students a lasting skills passport.

“Crucially, this gives young people a more active role in recognising their progress and carrying evidence of their achievements into their futures. We believe it could provide an important example of how education better prepares students for life beyond school.”

A regional partnership with national relevance

The challenges facing young people require action across education, employment, health and wider support services.

Within that broader response, this partnership offers a practical contribution: connecting an ambitious curriculum with a consistent way to evidence skills, recognise achievement and understand access to experiences.

Over three years, it creates an opportunity to learn what works across participating schools and Trusts, and to share lessons that could inform practice elsewhere.

Its wider potential lies in demonstrating how curriculum innovation and student agency can reinforce one another: schools develop richer learning opportunities, while young people build the evidence and confidence to make use of them.

Ben Mason, Founder and CEO of globalbridge, said:

“Milburn’s review highlights the importance of preparing young people for the transition beyond school. Skills England’s new framework reinforces the need to help them recognise and communicate the capabilities they develop.

“Our partnership with the CEO Futures Forum connects those challenges with practical action. WMBacc provides an ambitious curriculum, Skills Builder provides a shared language for essential skills, and globalbridge helps turn learning and experiences into lasting evidence.

“The next evolution of education data must help turn institutional intelligence into individual opportunity. Schools need to understand the impact of their curriculum, and students should be able to carry forward relevant evidence of what they have achieved.

“A next-generation curriculum deserves a next-generation skills passport, one that helps young people recognise their strengths, evidence their development and take greater ownership of their next steps.”

The ambition is for young people to leave education with qualifications, meaningful experiences and a stronger understanding of their capabilities, supported by evidence they can carry forward.

Through WMBacc and globalbridge, we have an exciting opportunity to help make that ambition a reality.

Turn your institutional intelligence into student evidence

The globalbridge Skills Passport allows students to capture evidence of their broader education outcomes, skills and experiences. Book a demo to see how your students can build their digital record of achievement, or find out more for schools and employers.

Want to track the Skills England framework directly in globalbridge? We're gauging interest from schools, trusts and employers now. Register your interest and we'll keep you posted.

globalbridge — From experience to evidence.