Innovative digital models are helping educators and employers better operationalise the Gatsby Benchmarks, explain Safa Irfan and Dhruva Banerjee at ProjectSet UK.
The adoption of the Gatsby Benchmarks as statutory guidance is transforming career education across UK schools and colleges. Since 2018, more than 90% of institutions have embedded the framework and increased benchmark coverage from just 23% in 2017 to 73% in 2024.
Even as workplaces are reshaped by AI, talent mobility and shifting economic regulations, the Gatsby benchmarks remain highly relevant. What is changing, however, is the rapidly growing importance and impact of digital tools for educators and employers to operationalise these benchmarks.
A new generation of technologies is enabling schools, colleges, and businesses to collaborate more effectively, scale impactful programmes, and better prepare young people for the world of work.
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Personalisation at scale
Benchmarks III (Addressing the needs of each young person) and VIII (Personal Guidance) demand tailored support for each student. This requires educators to be trained and equipped to:
- Track individual career preferences of students
Unlike mainstream subjects such as history or mathematics, career education content needs to be customised to the needs and aspirations of each students.
Few institutions such as Connell Co-op College handle this by integrating students’ career goals and destinations into their intake process and provide them relevant and impactful guidance. This approach is effective if students broadly stick to their original career goals.
Other institutions such as Aston University and Nottingham Trent University use I-powered tools (e.g. Interview360, CV360, etc.) to provide customised feedback to students on their CVs, covering aspects like presentation, structure, content, and language.
- Adapt to changes in career aspirations
61% of students shift their career goals through secondary and post-secondary education, sometimes more than once. To support these students meaningfully, educators need access to information and tools on a wide range of careers and skills.
Many schools and colleges such as Southmoor Academy use skills frameworks (e.g. Skills Builder Framework, Career Clusters framework or the Durable Skills framework) to support their students with career and skills information for their chosen areas. These digital frameworks offer comprehensive guidelines for a wide range of careers.
- Update intelligence on skill and competency needs of the workplace
The job context and content of early-career roles are evolving rapidly with the adoption of AI, digital and other key technologies and processes.
To keep pace with these changes in datasets and taxonomies, institutions such as Capital College and Career Academy use AI-powered simulated work-based learning to support their students with updated skills information and training.
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Employer encounters made easier
Benchmarks IV (Linking curriculum learning to careers) and V (Encounters with employers and employees) advocate authentic employer engagement. However, existing models – with inadequate structure or incentives – have failed to deliver such partnerships at scale; less than 20% students go through meaningful encounters with employers before entering the workforce.
Accordingly, many educators and institutions – such as Highfields School, Richard Challoner School, University of Hertfordshire, University of East London and Queen Mary University of London – are embracing new digital models and platforms such as Forage and Bright Network to significantly increase the number of students going through the employer encounters before they graduate.
These platforms offer virtual, part-time encounters that offer a distinctly different learning outcome relative to the traditional in-person, full-time models. These models are scalable and a significantly better alternative to ‘zero encounters’.
In addition, these models are 80% more efficient as they automate routine processes (e.g. student or employer outreach, scheduling, and feedback) and allow educators and employers to focus on meaningful interactions.
These models also offer greater flexibility through asynchronous engagement, making it easier for professionals to share insights without significant time away from their day-to-day roles.
For HR teams, this creates low-barrier opportunities to showcase their sector, nurture early talent pipelines, and contribute to community impact goals. structured coordination and collaboration between educators and employers struggle to find time and incentives to collaborate.
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Redefining ‘workplace experience’
Benchmark VI (Experiences of workplaces) traditionally relied on in-person placements. But with over 80% of roles now offering some degree of remote flexibility (55% hybrid, 26% fully remote), workplace models have changed dramatically.
Consequently, virtual and simulated work-based learning programmes can offer a more authentic experience of the future of work. These quasi immersive environments help students understand modern workplace dynamics – digital collaboration, hybrid workflows, and cross-border teamwork – better reflecting the realities they will face.
Students from several institutions such as University of Sheffield, University of Reading and Queen Mary University of London actively engage in these innovative programmes such as UniHack (hackathon), skills bootcamp and other inter-university programmes.
For employers, they also offer scalable alternatives to in-person placements, widening access to students from underrepresented or geographically distant groups.
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Durable skills: the lasting advantage
Beyond technical knowledge, the Gatsby framework exposes students to durable skills such as communication, problem-solving, and teamwork. These skills, with an estimated half-life of 7.5 years, outlast most technical skills (2.5 years) and are valued across all industries.
An increasing number of education institutions such as the University of Nottingham, the University of Bath, and Kingston University are adopting digital tools such as Coursera and FutureLearn to help their students build these durable skills for career success.
Students from several institutions such as University of Sheffield and Queen Mary University of London are also adopting student-centric tools such as ProjectSet to record, evidence, and showcase their skills through digital portfolios, micro-credentials, or employer-endorsed artefacts.
For HR professionals, this makes student skills more visible and verifiable, improving early talent selection. Preliminary evidence suggests that simulated projects are as effective as authentic ones to build durable skills.
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Student agency and data ownership
Career development is rarely linear. Students begin their journey in school but continue exploring and refining choices through higher education and early career stages.
The Gatsby Benchmarks reinforce the need for student agency: young people must be able to carry their career readiness data across institutions and into the workplace.
Innovative platforms such as Parker Dewey and ProjectSet give learners secure ownership of their records and achievements, allowing them to build a portable career profile. For employers, this means clearer visibility of skills progression and better alignment between education and workforce needs.
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Navigating a volatile early career market
The graduate job market remains volatile. In 2025, overall job listings on Indeed fell by 14%, with graduate opportunities down 12%. Yet sectoral differences are stark: while construction and healthcare grew, major professional services firms (KPMG, Deloitte, EY, PwC) cut graduate intakes (by 29%, 18%, 11%, and 6% respectively).
The latest data of ISE members - large employers offering formal graduate and apprenticeship programmes - found that graduate hiring had fallen by 8% year-on-year.
At the same time, job content is shifting. AI is taking on repetitive, data-heavy tasks, while early-career roles now focus on value-added responsibilities such as vetting AI outputs and problem-solving. Research confirms that AI is more likely to transform than eliminate graduate roles.
To address this uncertainty, educators are increasingly relying on digital work-based learning tools that give students practical exposure regardless of market fluctuations. For educators, these innovations create resilience in programme delivery. For employers, they widen the talent pool by supporting students who might otherwise be excluded from traditional internships, in a time- and cost-efficient way.
The Gatsby Benchmarks remain a cornerstone of UK careers education, but their full potential depends on the adoption of innovative digital models and datasets that strengthen employer-educator collaboration.
For educators, these technologies enable personalisation, resilience, and scale. For employers, they offer a practical, low-cost way to shape future talent pipelines and ensure that students graduate with both technical and durable skills.
In a workplace defined by change, these partnerships are key to preparing the next generation for sustainable success.