As a Sector Skills Council, Creative & Cultural Skills has an important role to play in the development of qualifications to ensure that they are fit for purpose and respond to the needs of our industries.  Qualifications include GCSEs, A Levels, vocational qualifications, S/NVQs, Apprenticeships frameworks, Foundation Degrees and Higher Education provision.

A key objective of this strategy is to support the shift towards a qualifications and training system which is demand led – that is, responsive to employer needs.  To support this, we need you to tell us what you want and need from qualifications and training so that we may work with key stakeholders to ensure this is achieved.

To support this, we have in place a Sector Qualifications Strategy (SQS) which outlines the current and future education and training needs of employers in the creative and cultural sectors.  It sets out a strategy to improve qualifications and training to ensure that current and future skills needs are being met.

Our previous Sector Qualifications Strategy (SQS) expired in 2011, and our refreshed Sector Qualifications Strategy which was developed in partnership with industry has been published and can be found in the right hand column.

The development of an Action Plan coming out of the SQS and outlining activities for each UK Nation has begun.  An overview of the draft can be found here and a spreadsheet detailing the proposed actions is available here.  We ran a consultation in July 2011 to seek views from employers and providers on whether these actions were right for the industry and will review the Action Plan in response to feedback.  The final Action Plan will be available in Autumn 2011.