What does a good education give you? A store of useful facts needed for navigating the world of work? A set of  flexible skills to manage change in an uncertain future? Educationalists and politicians argue to and fro between knowledge and skills. Truth be told a good education gives you both: one (knowledge) giving the other (skills) contexts to develop.

Research from NTL indicates that learners remember more effectively when they can use skills to access, process and express their knowledge. Findings indicate that teaching and assessing someone else is deemed more effective than listening to a lecture. If this is true then it's a good rationale for skills based learning: teaching and assessing one another needs planning, group work, creativity, enquiry, evaluation and self-confidence. Listening to a lecture calls on listening and maybe note-making.

Skills based learning provides classroom environments where independence, thinking skills, collaboration and active learning are developed at the same time as knowledge is acquired.