Project Shybird
A WORKS is the space we hold to work in whatever ways are necessary to solve the problems our markets face. Project Shybird is both the first project we're launching through A WORKS – and a perfect exemplification of the A WORKS mindset and model in action.
Through Project Shybird we're solving complex, entrenched, problems which speak to the impact education has on productivity, growth, community and social mobility. We're tackling challenges across the whole value chain - from the specification of what should be taught, to how those capabilities should be assessed, and how educators design and personalise learning.
We're building a solution powered by labour market insight and AI that will:
- Help awarding organisations, universities, others create qualification and training programme specifications which are truly, madly, deeply, rooted in labour market insights.
- Enable them to bring those products to market in days, not months or years, whilst massively enhancing their technical quality and differentiation.
- Help teachers to embrace and teach new products by making it easier for them to translate product requirements into learning journeys, content, and resources.
- Help teachers to personalise learning to meet the diverse needs of students, including to address the growing prevalence of additional learning needs.
To do it we’re combining the three things we believe will shape the future: deep market insight, unfettered imagination, and AI. However powerful the technology is and becomes, it is our ability to imagine how we could deploy it, and to capture our insights in it, that solve the problem.
The cornerstone of our approach, and solution, are the way in which we conduct labour market research and customer insight work on a scale, and at a pace, unimaginable without AI. Our research method and AI tool enable us to:
- Analyse thousands of job adverts in the relevant geography to glean, clean, synthesise, and prioritise relevant knowledge, skill, and behaviour (KSB) requirements.
- Do the same with job profiles, such that we’re tapping into both what employers say to the market when they recruit — and what practitioners say within organisations.
- Identify nations and regions where the relevant subject or occupation is more established and mine job ads and profiles there — to pick out emerging and likely future requirements.
- Create and consult a representative, synthetic, panel of practitioners in the relevant subject or occupational area to help us test, refine, and prioritise KSBs after each research iteration.
We apply the same AI-enabled, research and insight-driven, mindset to help us define the most appropriate assessment methods for those KSB. The output is both an unprecedentedly robust new product – and a knowledge graph which underpins agentic support for teachers’ work to create and personalise learning journeys, content, and resources.
Whilst the coming wave of reform in the UK technical, vocational, and apprenticeship markets mean that we’re building first for the UK, we do see Shybird as a global project. All education and training systems need to bring labour market resonant products forward at pace, and support teachers to create and personalise learning.
Having completed a successful proof of concept phase in the autumn of 2025, we’re now working at pace to build out our solution. If you’re leading product strategy and development work in an awarding organisation, professional body, university in the UK or Americas, we’d love to talk.
