By Gary Gates, SVP Global Business & UK Higher Education

Back when Pearson launched UK Learns in May the impact of Covid was being painfully felt
across the UK job market, with swathes of workers furloughed or made unemployed
in sectors from retail to hospitality.

Pearson, with help from partners including FutureLearn, OU OpenLearn, the School of Marketing and the National Extension College, set up UK Learns to offer workers a free, wide-ranging selection of online courses.

The aim being to help them learn new skills and earn qualifications or accreditations that could open up better job and career opportunities.

Now, as we reach the end of 2020 but unfortunately not the end of job cuts or economic uncertainty, we wanted to share the courses that have proved most popular so far as well as highlighting the breadth of courses available on UK Learns.

In terms of popular take up, we have seen people wanting to brush up on their core English and Maths skills, exploring traditional professions such as bookkeeping and accounting but also looking to equip themselves for the digital age through short introductory courses, such as ‘Marketing on Instagram’.

Another real sign of the times, showing that people are taking major stock of their future job direction – whether through choice or lack thereof – is the popularity of the course ‘Which career for me?’

Since launch we have been regularly adding new courses onto the UK Learns platform. We now have over 400 courses available covering everything from Advertising, Energy & Utilities and Professional Skills through to Pharmaceuticals and Teaching.

And we are not stopping – just this month new categories have been added in Engineering
& Manufacturing, Business, Consulting & Management and Environment & Agriculture.

We are proud that UK Learns does and will continue to offer support for our workforce, as when and they need it, to help them start on the ladder of learning new skills and opening up new job
opportunities.