Celebrating a Decade of Empowering Singaporeans to Upskill and Reskill, and Advance in Their Careers

Launched in 2015, the SkillsFuture movement marked its 10^th Anniversary today, at the event – SkillsFuture, The Next 10: Building Skills, Growing Careers. The event was attended by Guest-of-Honour Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Mr Lawrence Wong, as well as Minister for Education, Mr Chan Chun Sing, Minister for Manpower, Dr Tan See Leng, and Minister of State for Education and Manpower, Ms Gan Siow Huang.  

A Decade of Empowering Singaporeans to Reskill and Upskill

The SkillsFuture movement was launched as a national movement to promote a culture of lifelong learning, and provide Singaporeans with the opportunities to develop to their fullest potential, regardless of their starting points.  

 Under the SkillsFuture movement, we have expanded training support and programmes significantly to enable individuals to acquire and hone industry-relevant skills and stay employable. These include the recent SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme, as well as the SkillsFuture Career Transition Programme and the SkillsFuture Work-Study Programmes. The SkillsFuture movement also strengthened the involvement of employers in skills development through initiatives such as the National Centre of Excellence for Workplace Learning, SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit, SkillsFuture Queen Bees and Skills Development Partners. During the COVID-19 pandemic, measures such as the SGUnited Jobs & Skills Programme, co-driven by SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG), and the Enhanced Training Support Package were also implemented to help individuals and enterprises emerge stronger from the pandemic.

Over the years, SkillsFuture initiatives have expanded to cover over 28,000 courses offered by a diverse training sector that include Institutes of Higher Learning, and private providers with close links to the industry. The courses ranged from full qualifications to short courses to meet specific industry needs. This has enabled more than 500,000 Singaporeans or a fifth of the workforce to be trained every year. Employer participation in the SkillsFuture movement has also doubled from 12,000 companies in 2015 to 24,000 in 2024. The number of employees supported by their employers for SSG-supported training also increased from 160,000 in 2015 to 241,000 in 2024. Training methods, workplace learning, employment facilitation, and use of e-learning have improved over time, with rising learner validation scores for SkillsFuture-supported training.

Today, the SkillsFuture movement is a key pillar of Singapore’s refreshed social compact. Moving forward, SSG and WSG will co-lead the SkillsFuture movement to strengthen the nexus between skills and careers, and enable Singaporeans to build employment resilience and career health. Through various initiatives, SSG and WSG will work with ecosystem partners to provide Singaporeans with a suite of tools, support and programmes at various stages of their careers and lives. At the same time, businesses will receive support in their workforce transformation through job redesign, skills-first hiring, upskilling and reskilling efforts, helping them create good jobs for Singaporeans and enabling their workforce to be future ready.

SkillsFuture Movement 10th Anniversary Celebrations

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the SkillsFuture movement, SSG and WSG kicked-off celebrations with the event – SkillsFuture, The Next 10: Building Skills, Growing Careers. About 300 education, enterprise, union and industry partners attended the event. At the event, the new national SkillsFuture movement logo was launched to reflect the refreshed approach of strengthening the nexus between career and skills. As part of this thrust, the event showcased the Career & Skills Passport, which is a personal digital repository to help Singaporeans take charge of their career health and better track their career and skills development. For more information on the Career & Skills Passport, please refer to Annex A.

To underscore the movement as a whole-of-nation effort to nurture a future-ready and resilient workforce that enables business success and supports a thriving economy, the event also brought together a panel with individual, employer, union and Government representatives. The engaging discussion highlighted various perspectives on how the SkillsFuture movement provides opportunities for every Singaporean to upskill and stay competitive; the crucial roles the various stakeholders in the ecosystem played, particularly that of employers in workforce transformation and building the career health of their employees, and the future vision for the SkillsFuture movement as it evolves. Please refer to Annex B for the list of panellists.

As part of the 10th anniversary, SSG and WSG will roll out a series of initiatives throughout the year to strengthen the quality of adult learning and career facilitation, and to tighten the nexus between skills development and career progression. Please refer to Annex C for an early preview of these initiatives. More details of these initiatives will be announced later.

 Mr Tan Kok Yam, Chief Executive of SSG said: “Over the last 10 years, SkillsFuture has enabled Singaporeans to enhance their skills, pursue new opportunities and remain resilient.  In the next 10 years, the SkillsFuture movement will have to “level up” its support to Singaporeans, and give our workers the tools and the confidence to thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world. Under SkillsFuture, we will encourage individuals to be mindful of their career health, raise quality and relevance of learning, and help employers hire by skills and invest in their people. SSG and WSG are committed to these goals, and committed to working with key partners to achieve them.”  

 Ms Dilys Boey, Chief Executive of WSG said: “Since its inception, the SkillsFuture movement has been instrumental in inculcating a culture of lifelong learning, enabling Singaporeans to develop their potentials, at every stage in life. In the next decade of the SkillsFuture movement, WSG is excited to co-lead efforts with SSG to build the career health of our workforce and enable individuals to access good job opportunities, and find fulfilling pathways in their careers. We will also deepen our collaboration with industry partners and support enterprises on their workforce transformation efforts to redesign jobs, and develop their workforce to remain agile as technology advancements and industry transformation reshapes the future of work and jobs.”

For more information, refer to Annex A-C.