While we bring an increasing range of frameworks and technologies to measuring what people can do, we increasingly lose sight of the capabilities we are trying to grow in them, and our systems haven’t noticed. I have spent a large proportion of my working life developing measurement tools and evaluating reform initiatives in different aspects of the education system. The question I’m typically asked to assess is whether the project met its objectives – was there improvement i

Three posts this week have approached the same underlying question from different angles. The first looked at universities making bold public commitments to graduate AI-fluent professionals and asked who is actually verifying those claims. The second looked at organisations investing heavily in AI training, measuring completion rates, and calling it competency assessment and asked whether a HR platform tracking module completion has anything meaningful to say about profession

Think about the day you qualified. How capable did you actually feel? How much did you really know? Were you confident? Or were you like me, a little terrified, when you walked out with that designation in your hand? And how much of what makes you genuinely valuable today did you learn in the years that followed? The clients you couldn't have handled then. The decisions you now make without thinking. The judgement that only comes from being tested, failing quietly, and findin

The FT ran a sharp analysis this week on what's happening to software engineers under agentic AI. Job vacancies are up. But only for seniors. Entry-level roles remain flat and the pay gap between top and bottom appears to be widening. The conclusion many people are drawing is that the future will belong to those who can delegate and direct, not those who can code. The ability to critique and critically review over technical depth. I understand the conclusion but I think it i