SSG Kicks Off SkillsFuture Festival 2025 with Forum on Building Business Resilience and Enabling Career Growth

SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Lifelong Learning Institute Pte Ltd (LLI) kicked off SkillsFuture Festival 2025 this morning at Raffles City Convention Centre with the annual SkillsFuture Forum. Guest-of-Honour Mr Desmond Lee, Minister for Education; and Minister-in-charge of Social Services Integration, together with Dr Janil Puthucheary, Senior Minister of State for Education; and Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment, attended the event.

At the event, Minister Lee highlighted the good progress the SkillsFuture initiative has made in the past decade. He added that the success of the next phase of the SkillsFuture movement depends on all to create enabling conditions for every Singaporean worker to thrive.

Themed, “Building Business Resilience and Enabling Career Growth through Skills Development”, this year’s forum underscores the importance of employers investing in the skills development of their workforce and recognising and rewarding workers for their skills. Similarly, individuals must take charge of their own career health by actively planning and pursuing skills upgrading. The Government will continue to uplift our Continuing Education and Training (CET) ecosystem, to ensure that CET programmes are of high quality and industry relevant.

Minister Lee also announced three new developments in the SkillsFuture ecosystem:

• Revamping professional requirements for Adult Educators (AEs) through the Training and Adult Educator Professional Pathway (TAEPP);

• Appointment of UOB as a SkillsFuture Queen Bee, and;

• Enhanced services at LLI to support Singaporeans’ lifelong learning journey and career health.

Uplifting Professional Standards of Adult Educators

AEs are the last mile of the training sector. A competent, knowledgeable trainer helps ensure an effective, positive learning experience.

The new TAEPP aims to further professionalise the Training and Adult Education (TAE) sector and support the continual professional development of AEs.  The Institute for Adult Learning (IAL) will implement the TAEPP.  Under TAEPP, AEs who deliver SSG-supported training will be required to continually upskill and register practice hours, to remain on the national Adult Educator registry. This requirement will take effect from 1 April 2026. SSG and IAL are committed to supporting our AEs in making the transition. For more details, please refer to the TAEPP factsheet.

UOB Joins the SkillsFuture Queen Bee Initiative

The SkillsFuture Queen Bee (SFQB) initiative has expanded considerably since its inception five years ago. A total of 37 Queen Bee companies have benefitted about 5,770 enterprises as of March 2025.

This initiative demonstrates how the impact of the SkillsFuture movement can be amplified through partners working within their respective domains and sectors. The participating companies that Queen Bees have reached out to registered three times higher worker training participation compared to non-participating companies, with 86% reporting positive business impact from the programme. About 80% of these beneficiaries are Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Adding momentum to the initiative, UOB joins the ranks of the SFQB initiative today. The three-year partnership will leverage the UOB FinLab, UOB’s strategic community enabler, to benefit approximately 200 SMEs and some 800 SME employees, through artificial intelligence, digitalisation and sustainability training. UOB will collaborate with the National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) to provide these programmes. For more details, please refer to the UOB SFQB factsheet.

LLI Rebrands in Enhanced Commitment to Lifelong Learning

Since 2014, LLI has supported Singaporeans’ lifelong learning journey and career health, and helped Singaporeans make more informed decisions on the skills to acquire to build their careers. LLI has been renamed Lifelong Learning Singapore (LLSG) as of 1 July 2025. LLSG will establish a new advisory centre within the LLI building to offer enhanced career guidance, up-to-date jobs-skills insights, and industry exposure opportunities. It will continue to build awareness and sign-post individuals to relevant, meaningful training, through events and community activities.

What You Can Look Forward to at This Year’s SkillsFuture Festival

The SkillsFuture Festival 2025, which is part of the 10^th anniversary celebrations of the SkillsFuture movement, takes place from 7 July to 18 August. This year’s festival features more than 150 events island-wide that will cater to individuals and enterprises, making it the largest SkillsFuture Festival to date. Kicking off this year’s festival is the SkillsFuture Forum, themed “Building Business Resilience and Enabling Career Growth through Skills Development”. The Forum saw engaging discussions from panellists which include individuals, various industries and the Government. More information on the panellists can be found in the Annex.

For a list of the key events, please refer to the Annex. More information on all other events will also be available on the SkillsFuture Festival 2025 website: https://www.skillsfuturefestival.sg.

For more information, refer to the Annex.