Deadline: 4-Feb-25
The Ufi VocTech Trust is thrilled to announce its call for VocTech Activate Grant Fund to transform lives and build a better future where everyone is included, skilled and empowered.
This grant call supports early-stage projects that use technology to address real-world problems in UK adult vocational learning. Ufi’s focus is on learners aged 16+. They are especially interested in supporting learners or users in sectors and locations that have not been well served by mainstream provision. Projects will need to show why the learners or users being targeted have been overlooked.
VocTech Activate funding supports the development of early-stage ideas through testing, proof of concept and MVP work, and strategy planning for future growth beyond Ufi’s support. This grant aligns with Ufi’s mission to scale the adoption of VocTech by enabling new ideas to reach a stage where they can demonstrate impact, value, and a clear path to market. By proving the concept and its benefits for learners and other stakeholders, VocTech Activate fosters accessible, affordable digital learning tools that equip UK adults with the skills needed to succeed.
Objectives
- They want to see innovative digital vocational learning ideas which are:
- Genuinely innovative in their overall approach, their technology, or the sector or community of learners to which they will be applied.
- Clear in their understanding of and access to a defined learner group/test group of users, with a clear evidenced understanding of their challenges.
- Projects that are aware of their learners/users’ barriers to learning, and any barriers to adoption of technology-based approaches.
- Tackling specific vocational skills gaps, with good connections to sectors, employers and potential employment.
- Ideas where people are really thinking differently about how to use technology to deliver effective vocational learning at scale.
- Projects that look at any and every aspect of vocational learning, including (but not limited to) deployment, design and development of learning tools, new delivery models, evaluation and assessment, accreditation and recording evidence of achievement.
- Projects targeted at extending learning provision to sectors, industries and communities of learners that currently lack good access to vocational learning due to factors including market/sectoral structures, cost, time, distance or language.
Focus Areas
- They are keen to draw upon the insights they have gathered from market intelligence work and engagement with stakeholders. These have highlighted areas where they feel there is a both a need for innovation in adult vocational skills and opportunity for scale. Issues, for example, include:
- Innovation in assessment, enabling learners to access feedback and content tailored to them, when they need it.
- Innovative use of data, including AI and big data to improve outcomes for learners.
- Making it easier and cheaper for trainers and teachers to develop their own high quality, interactive e-learning content for vocational learners.
- Working with relevant employers and learning organisations to create new ways for people to validate their skills and create pathways to work, or to allow people in work to transition to new opportunities.
Funding Information
- Grants of between £30,000 to £60,000 are available for projects of between three and 12 months duration.
Eligible Costs
- VocTech Activate will grant fund the design, development and early stage testing and adoption of new approaches to digital vocational learning; helping to take those ideas through basic prototyping to the next stage of ‘seeding the market’ by delivering a first proof of concept prototype and planning a route to market. This could include:
- Design, development, and prototyping with learners.
- Refining learning design.
- Testing with users.
- Planning a route from MVP to a sustainable, scalable product.
- Planning a route to market & strategies for scaling.
- Project Management.
- Evidencing impact, demonstrating value and what works.
Ineligible Costs
- Training places for individuals.
- Projects for schools. Sometimes there are spill over benefits for 14 -16 year olds, but this must not be the focus of the project.
- Degrees, degree level studies, or projects focussing on qualifications above level 3 or equivalent.
- Research projects, where the only output is a document/paper.
- Standard ‘content’ projects, where offline learning is just being put online with no innovation.
- Course or curriculum development alone.
- Generic employability skills such as CV building or time management.
- Basic digital skills and life management skills, such as using Microsoft Office or getting online.
- Enterprise or entrepreneurship skills.
- Routine business development or product development where there is no public benefit case for charitable funding.
- Core costs/general overheads of non-charities.
Eligibility Criteria
- Projects must:
- Focus on adult vocational learning in the UK (be aimed at adults 16+).
- Offer new learning tools, not just new learning content.
- Show real innovation and risk to justify Ufi funding.
- Show a clear understanding of the vocational learning market, have evidence of a defined learning need and describe how they expect the tech will improve outcomes for learners, in addition to the technical advances.
- Show real innovation and risk to achieve a step change beyond normal business development to justify Ufi funding.
- Have a strong evidenced connection to a clearly defined learner group, and a clear understanding of their challenges, barriers to learning and barriers to adoption of technology-based approaches.
- Have plans for testing with relevant learners/trainers/employers and for incorporating feedback from testing into product development.
- Show ambition and vision for how the project could get to market and be eventually scaled up to reach a large number of learners, if the proof of concept proves successful.
For more information, visit Ufi VocTech Trust.