The Department for Education has announced new qualifications designed to help adults learn essential digital skills, which will be available free to anyone over the age of 19 from 2020. This new national entitlement will fully fund adults with no or low digital skills to undertake the new qualifications. They will be supported to use digital devices like tablets, smart phones and laptops and to perform everyday activities like how to navigate the internet, send an email and make online payments. This news follows a consultation which concluded in January on plans to improve adult basic digital skills, the government’s response to the consultation is here. Another consultation run by Ofqual on regulating basic digital skills qualifications ran at the same time, the outcome for that is here. New national standards setting out the digital skills needed for life and work at entry and level 1 have now been published alongside an equality impact assessment of the new standards.
