For Learners
Watch this video to find out more about what the subjects you study at school have to do with work and your future career.
Want to know more about transferable skills?
Understanding transferable skills
Transferable skills are the skills you use and develop in one situation – like your education – that are also used and developed in other situations – like the workplace. Whatever subjects you study and whatever job or career you choose, many of the transferable skills you develop at school and college will be used in your future work. They might be used in different ways, but they are exactly the same skills.
You can find examples of some of the transferable skills you are developing in each of your subjects by using the SkillsMap® search tool on this website.
In the database behind SkillsMap® there are over 250 different transferable skills, and in each subject you study you are likely to be using and developing between 50 and 100 of them. That is a lot of skills! If we showed you all those skills here, it would be a bit overwhelming and difficult to make sense of!
So in SkillsMap® we show you 15 of the transferable skills you develop so you can get used to the idea that this is something happening in every subject you study. They are a sample selection to give you an idea. They are not necessarily the most important or frequently used skills in this subject, but simply a range to show you how different the skills are in each subject, and between different subjects. Your teachers and careers leaders will help you discover more if you are interested.
The other really useful thing that SkillsMap® shows you is that you are developing the same skills in more than one subject at a time. In subjects that have some similarities or connections – like science subjects or creative subjects – there are more transferable skills in common. But even in very different subjects – for example Dance, Physics and Geography –you are using and developing not only some similar skills but also a very wide range of different transferable skills.
Transferable skills can also be grouped together, depending on what you use them for. In this website you can explore Categories and Clusters of skills, and how you might use them in the workplace.