The UK's Digital Badging Commission, convened by the RSA and Ufi VocTech Trust, published its final report, From skills to growth: A plan for digital badging in the UK, in October 2025. It makes three main recommendations: build digital badges into post-16 education and training, create a national skills wallet on open standards, and set up a registry to quality-assure badges. For issuers, the message is to issue badges that are verifiable, standards-based and mapped to recognised skills.
Why This Matters
The UK's current system for recognising skills isn't keeping up. Millions of people gain valuable capabilities through work, volunteering and short courses, but lack the proof to show it. Employers, meanwhile, struggle to see beyond formal qualifications when assessing real-world ability.
The result? Hidden skills, slow hiring, duplicated training, and a lost opportunity to connect talent with demand.
Digital badges offer a simple, scalable solution. By making verified skills visible online, they help individuals showcase what they can do, and help employers identify the right candidates faster.
For wider evidence on skills and credentials, see our summary of the 2025 ETS Human Progress Report.
Three National Priorities Identified by the Commission
The report calls for urgent action in three areas:
Integrate Digital Badges into Post-16 Education and Training
Digital badges should become part of the UK's lifelong learning system, from Skills Bootcamps to college courses, allowing learners to display technical and transferable skills alongside traditional qualifications. This would help employers recruit based on verified capability, not just course titles.Create a National Skills Wallet Using Open Standards
A government-backed "skills wallet" would give every citizen a secure digital record of achievements, GCSEs, A-Levels, professional certifications, and digital badges, all in one place. Interoperability is key: it must connect with existing digital wallets, platforms, and GOV.UK One Login. Certify's recipient backpack already gives every recipient a personal credential wallet that they keep for life.Establish a National Registry for Credential Quality Assurance
Trust is essential. A national registry would ensure badges meet clear, transparent standards, giving employers confidence in what they represent and learners assurance that their achievements hold value.
The Economic Case
The Commission's economic modelling, which the report describes as illustrative, is striking. It estimates "savings of over £100m annually in the NHS alone from reduced duplicated training and onboarding time", and finds that accelerated hiring nationally "could yield between £1.6bn and £5.3bn per year in increased productivity and reduced HR costs" (From skills to growth, page 7).
That's not just a technical upgrade, it's a national growth strategy.
Certify's Perspective
At Certify, we see the same patterns across our clients in education, professional training and workforce development. When digital badges are implemented with robust verification, analytics and employer engagement, they drive measurable ROI.
Badges make learning visible, measurable and portable. They reduce hiring friction, motivate learners, and connect training investment directly to employability outcomes.
The UK report reinforces what we see with Certify's customers: when digital credentials are trusted, integrated and analytics-driven, they transform how skills are valued and communicated.
Building Trust and Scale
For badges to achieve their potential, they must be more than decorative icons. They must be verifiable, portable, and aligned to recognised frameworks, just as the report recommends.
At Certify, we support issuers to design high-quality badges mapped to skills frameworks, ensuring every credential is transparent, comparable and meaningful to employers.
The Moment to Act
As the Commission puts it, "now is the moment for the Government to act" (page 2). But action isn't limited to policymakers. Employers, educators and technology partners can move now, building the infrastructure of trust and recognition from the ground up.
Digital credentials can unite formal education, non-formal learning and on-the-job development under one shared language of skills. The foundation has been laid; what's needed now is adoption at scale.
