UK digital skills standards: updated! (still rubbish)
On the one hand, it's good that the UK government has updated its Essential Digital Skills Standards. On the other hand, they're about a decade out of date (in the same way that the previous ones were even more out of date).
The introduction says:
The standards have been revised and expanded in response to technological change, including artificial intelligence (AI), to ensure they remain relevant to the digital skills adults need today.
But they just don't seem that relevant for life in 2026. For example, Level 2 (the highest level, weirdly) for 'Creating and editing content' is:
Create and edit digital documents using appropriate formatting and layout conventions and make purposeful use of AI and other digital tools to improve clarity, accuracy and presentation while retaining responsibility for the final content.
No mention of collaborative editing, which I'd argue is pretty 'basic' these days'. And social media, which is where the majority of people spend the majority of their screen time, is treated as peripheral.
In other places, there's no care and attention paid to basic things like trigger verbs, which means you get meaningless skills statements such as "Know how to..." and "Understand that..." (I'm sure that I needn't point out that "knowing" and "understanding" aren't skills.)
Sigh. There's better work happening in Europe. If I get around to it, I might ask my Little Robot Friend to compare and contrast with the previous Essential digital skills framework (last updated: pre-pandemic).
Source: Original article · Are.na block · Digital Literacies channel