Shakespeare asked “What’s in a name?”, and it’s true that obsessing about terminology can be unhelpful. But sometimes it matters a great deal. And in the case of “soft skills”, the name has really held education back.
These are, in fact, core skills and should be recognised as such.
I’ve spent my career designing assessment pathways that provide opportunities to develop these skills, which we know matter but nonetheless refer to as “soft”. Collaboration, invention and communication, for example. These are crucial but rarely are they overt assessment objectives.
Maybe we don’t overtly assess these skills because we assume that students will develop them in the normal course of maturation, or through various experiences they happen to have at school. But shouldn’t this be intentional, rather than left to serendipity?
The problem with ‘soft skills’
Maybe it’s too hard. Perhaps these skills are deemed soft because they’re seen as fuzzy and hard to assess. It’s easier to test knowledge of Spanish verbs than to measure collaboration. This recalls ’s question: do we value what we measure or measure what we value?
Or perhaps something more pernicious is going on. I wonder whether, because so-called soft skills may be mastered by a wide variety of people and not just those who traditionally achieve highly at school, they are being seen as non-academic, or even counter to academic aims.
More on skills:
Soft is the opposite of hard, but hard is also the opposite of easy. I suspect that employing the term “soft skills” allows us to conceptualise it away from the rigours of the classroom, despite these skills often being really challenging to acquire. Hardly a soft option.
Worse still, could there be something gendered going on here? These skills, like communication and collaboration, are often linked to feminine traits. When I asked ChatGPT for 50 adjectives associated with femininity, “soft” was fourth. Does the association of soft skills with femininity perhaps contribute to their neglected status?
A new approach
The term needs to go. But what can teachers do to remedy the marginalisation?
First, take these skills seriously by making them an explicit part of your planning. “But where’s the time?” replies every teacher, everywhere. These skills simply provide a lens through which to do the curriculum planning we do anyway.
If one of your aims is collaboration, that probably looks like designing some really good group work tasks. If your aim is communication, include opportunities for oracy. For both, use group work involving oracy. This isn’t about doing more but enhancing what you’re already doing and making these skills overt.
And what should we call them? Not soft skills, nor 21st-century skills (collaboration and communication have always mattered). I prefer “dispositions”, but, ultimately, the priority we give them is what truly counts.
Clare Jarmy is Director of Innovation at Haberdashers’ Elstree Schools
