This informal CPD article ‘The Pedagogy of "Transversal Skills": Lessons from Latvia's Skola2030’ was provided by Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Al Souleiman of OUS Academy, a global education group with a commitment to diversity and global engagement. They deliver online education and operate across seven international locations.
Most training professionals have met the learner who passes every quiz and still cannot apply the material when a real problem lands on the desk. The gap between knowing something and being able to use it is an old one, yet it remains stubbornly present in corporate training and adult education. Latvia offers a useful case for thinking about it. Through its national curriculum reform, known as Skola2030, the country has tried to reorganise schooling around competence rather than content coverage, with a set of "transversal skills" taught through every subject (4). Although the reform was designed for schools, its logic carries over well to adult and workplace learning, and it gives UK trainers and instructional designers a practical model to test.
What Skola2030 Changed
Skola2030 was led by Latvia's National Centre for Education and introduced new standards and programmes in phases from September 2020, starting with selected grades and extending across general education in the following years (4). The reform followed an OECD review which found that Latvian pupils performed reasonably on knowledge recall but less well on tasks that asked them to apply, analyse or transfer what they had learned (5).
The response was to define the aim of schooling as competence, described in Latvian as lietpratiba: a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes that a learner can use in unfamiliar, complex situations (4). Subjects were grouped into learning areas, content was reduced so that fewer topics could be studied in more depth, and a set of transversal skills was written into every area. These are critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and entrepreneurship, self-directed learning, collaboration, civic participation, and digital literacy (4). The approach sits close to international frameworks such as the EU key competences for lifelong learning and the OECD Learning Compass 2030, both of which stress agency and the ability to act on knowledge (2, 6).
Two design choices stand out. First, transversal skills are not taught as separate lessons. They are practiced inside subject content, so a history unit may be the vehicle for evaluating sources and a science unit the vehicle for planning an investigation together. Second, expected results are written as observable performance at increasing levels of complexity, which gives teachers a shared language for feedback and assessment (4).
Why This Matters for Adult Learning
Research on learning transfer has long shown that knowledge acquired in one setting does not move easily into another unless learners practice applying it across varied contexts and reflect on the underlying principles (1). Adult learning theory adds that adults engage most readily when learning is problem-centred, tied to their own experience, and gives them some control over the process (3). Skola2030 is, in effect, a system-level attempt to build these conditions into everyday teaching. The same conditions can be designed into a two-day workshop or a blended programme, provided the design is deliberate.
A balanced reading is needed, however. Competence-based reform places heavy demands on teachers, who must plan integrated tasks, manage open-ended work and judge performance that is harder to score than a test. Early implementation in Latvia raised concerns about teacher workload, the pace of change and the consistency of assessment (5). Trainers adopting similar methods should expect comparable pressures and plan for them rather than assume the benefits will follow automatically.
Skola2030 Latvia's National Centre for Education
Practical Strategies for UK Trainers and Instructional Designers
- Anchor every module in an authentic task. Start design from a realistic workplace problem, such as a customer complaint, a compliance breach or a budget shortfall, and work backwards to the knowledge needed to solve it. Content then becomes a resource for the task rather than an end in itself.
- Name the transversal skill alongside the technical outcome. A learning outcome might read: "Participants will evaluate three supplier proposals against agreed criteria and justify a recommendation to peers." This makes critical thinking and communication visible, assessable goals rather than hoped-for by-products.
- Build collaboration with structure. Group work develops collaboration only when roles, shared goals and individual accountability are defined. Short protocols, such as rotating roles or a brief structured debrief, turn loose discussion into deliberate practice.
- Design for self-direction in stages. Adults vary in how ready they are to manage their own learning (3). Begin with guided choices, for example selecting one of two case studies, and move towards learner-set goals, personal learning plans and self-assessment against a rubric.
- Vary the context to support transfer. Present the same principle in at least two or three different scenarios and ask participants to state what stays constant. This comparison is one of the more reliable routes to transfer (1).
- Use progression rubrics for feedback. Following the Skola2030 practice of describing results at levels of complexity, write short rubrics that show what emerging, secure and advanced performance looks like. Share them before the task so learners can use them for self-monitoring (4).
- Close with structured reflection. End each session by asking participants what they did, why it worked or failed, and how they will use it at work next week. Reflection links the activity to the learner's own practice and supports later application (3).
Evaluating Impact
Transversal skills are difficult to measure, and designers should be realistic about what a short programme can show. Useful evidence includes observed performance on tasks, manager feedback gathered some weeks after training, and learner portfolios that record how skills were applied at work. Combining several of these sources gives a fairer picture than any single end-of-course test.
Conclusion
Skola2030 does not provide a ready-made template for corporate training, and its own implementation has faced real difficulties. What it does offer is a coherent principle: that knowledge, skills and attitudes are best developed together, through meaningful tasks, across different subjects. For UK trainers and instructional designers, applying that principle means designing around authentic problems, stating transversal outcomes openly, structuring collaboration and reflection, and assessing what learners can actually do. These are modest changes in design, but they move adult learning closer to the kind of capability that workplaces need.
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References
1. Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school (Expanded ed.). National Academy Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9853
2. Council of the European Union. (2018). Council recommendation of 22 May 2018 on key competences for lifelong learning (2018/C 189/01). Official Journal of the European Union, C 189, 1-13.
3. Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., III, & Swanson, R. A. (2015). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development (8th ed.). Routledge.
4. National Centre for Education of the Republic of Latvia. (2017). Education for modern competence: Description of the curriculum and approach [Izglitiba musdienigai lietpratibai: Macibu satura un pieejas apraksts]. Skola2030. https://www.skola2030.lv
5. OECD. (2016). Education in Latvia. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264250628-en
6. OECD. (2019). OECD future of education and skills 2030: OECD learning compass 2030. OECD Publishing.
