Badging for change
Too many skills go unseen. A new RSA-backed blueprint shows how digital credentials can make invisible talents visible – and valuable
Summary
Britain has a skills visibility problem, with many real-world abilities going unrecognised. The Digital Badging Commission’s recent report identifies how digital badges can make hidden talents visible, portable and trusted. The commission proposes three steps: integrate badges into post-16 learning, create a national digital skills wallet and establish clear quality assurance. The goal is inclusion as much as efficiency, helping learners, workers and employers see and value skills that exams alone overlook.
Think of everything you know how to do. Not just what’s on your CV – the additional skills you’ve picked up running a community campaign, mentoring a colleague, or responding to a work crisis. Now ask yourself: who can see them?
For most people, the answer is no one. Britain has a skills recognition problem. We’re a country where young people with real-world abilities can’t prove them, a care worker’s expertise in conflict resolution goes unnoticed, and volunteers’ capabilities can remain invisible to recruiters.
Digital badges offer a solution. These shareable visual credentials acknowledge and showcase learning, ranging from short courses and work experience to personal development. Since 2012, hundreds of millions have been issued globally, appearing on online CVs, email signatures and professional profiles. And now, after 18 months of investigation, the Digital Badging Commission (DBC) has published a blueprint for how Britain can finally make its hidden skills visible.
“Digital badges acknowledge and showcase learning, ranging from short courses and work experience to personal development. ”
On 13 October, we launched our final report to a packed Great Room at RSA House, with hundreds more joining online. The questions came thick and fast from Fellows, employers, educators and policy colleagues – a clear sign of growing appetite for a simpler, trusted way to recognise skills.
The work of the commission is the product of a partnership between the RSA and the Ufi VocTech Trust, and it builds on the RSA’s Cities of Learning programme. Speaking at the launch of the report were: Chair of Skills England Phil Smith, DBC co-chairs Professor Sir Chris Husbands and Rebecca Garrod-Waters, Careers and Technical Education Partnership Director at Bradford Council Alexandra Willans, and myself.
Practical blueprint for change
The commission’s answer is both practical and achievable: build a coherent, UK-wide digital badging infrastructure that makes people’s capabilities visible, portable and valuable across education and work. Our recommendations rest on three mutually reinforcing building blocks:
Integrate digital badges into post-16 education and training. Badges should sit alongside qualifications in further education and higher education, and in government-sponsored skills programmes, making transferable skills visible to learners and employers alike.
Create a national digital skills wallet, using open standards. A citizen-held portable digital wallet – or interoperable skills wallets – will allow people to store and share all forms of digital credentials and qualifications across their lifetime and across platforms. This would expand on the upcoming Education Record that all 16-year-olds will receive from 2026 capturing their GCSE results in a simple app.
Establish a national registry of quality assurance for digital badges and credentials. This is about trust and comparability: clear frameworks and transparent guidance, so employers, providers and individuals can rely on what a digital credential means.
Taken together, these steps move us from pilots and islands of innovation to a usable, nation-scale system. The economic case is strong too, with the commission outlining that such a system could reduce duplicated training across sectors, lower recruitment costs through faster hiring and improve workforce retention through better-recognised upskilling.
The commission looked at how the world uses digital badges – finding standout cases in Australia, Central Europe and the Americas. Some countries run national, joined-up platforms; others let colleges, cities and employers lead. The big idea across all is simple: make real skills visible, not just exam results.
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Why it matters
For the commission, this is not only an efficiency story – it is an inclusion story.
For learners with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), who are too often ill-served by rigid formal assessments, recognising skills builds confidence and rightfully highlights capabilities. Digital badges and credentials can carry evidence that reflect an individual’s strengths in communication, teamwork, self-management or problem-solving – skills employers say they need but frequently struggle to verify. The exemplar badge templates produced earlier this year by the commission included SEND provision for precisely this reason.
For employers though, how do we ensure badges are not ‘just another layer’ of an already dizzying array of UK qualifications? It’s a fair challenge. Our answer is that the infrastructure is being designed with employers’ needs front and centre, as evidenced in the UK Cities of Learning programme, which develops local employer coalitions linking what people can do to real jobs nearby. Bradford’s experience shows how a city can convene hundreds of schools, colleges, employers and community organisations to create visible pathways into work.
“For the commission, this is not only an efficiency story – it is an inclusion story.”
What happens next
Two imperatives follow. First, co-design with those who will use the system: employers, providers and learners – including SEND learners and their families. Second, deliver through partnership: with the employers, charities and providers using them, and our partnership with the Ufi VocTech Trust convening, testing and learning in public.
The RSA and Ufi will now focus on the what’s next, publishing lessons as we go. In the end, the test is simple: does a young person, a returner, or a mid-career worker find it easier to show what they can do? Does an employer find it easier to recognise and reward that? If the answer is ‘yes’ then digital badges and credentials will have done what they promised: making invisible skills visible, for those that need to show them most.
Patrina Law is the RSA’s Lifelong Learning Lead.
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