Skilled to go - Learning everyday consumer skills

Learning everyday consumer skills - a teachers' toolkit

Skilled to go uses real life consumer situations, such as choosing a mobile phone, to help learners develop consumer skills, knowledge and confidence alongside literacy and numeracy.

This FREE toolkit of resources includes games, quizzes, role plays and case studies, plus video and audio content.

  • Teacher quotesView all

    'I wish I had known about this site previously when we covered writing letters of complaint!'
    Karen Kennedy, Literacy/ Dyslexia Support, Liverpool Adult Learning Service

Scottish secondary education resources

Find out more about Skilled to go for use with secondary school learners in Scotland and view sample activities from the toolkit.


Who is this version for?

Launched in 2010, and updated in December 2011, this toolkit is tailored for teachers to use with Standard Grade secondary school students in Scotland, specifically in Home Economics and Social and Vocational Skills classes. 

Skilled to go can contribute to Curriculum for Excellence's Experiences and outcomes for Health and Wellbeing across learning, Literacy across learning, Numeracy across learning, Health and wellbeing, Social studies and Technologies at the third and fourth stages of learning and the Seven principles of curriculum design.

Activities are editable (downloadable in Word or Excel), so can be adapted to suit the level and needs of your learners.

What's covered in the toolkit?

The toolkit is made up of three modules, focusing on:

  • Buying and selling
  • Technology
  • Utilities

Examples of the skills that the toolkit aims to develop include the ability to:

  • research relevant information to help make consumer choices
  • consider personal needs and preferences before making a consumer decision
  • analyse the features of consumer goods and services to identify their pros and cons
  • compare consumer goods or services to make the best choice for individual circusmatnces
  • identify sources of help to deal with consumer problems or handle consumer problems effectively.

How is the toolkit organised?

There are two possible download options.

The original method involves downloading:

  • complete sets of Teachers' notes (see glossary) which include suggestions for delivery and consumer information for teachers for each module
  • a Curriculum mapping guide (see glossary) that provides background information on Skilled to go and full curriculum mapping
  • modules that are organised into units containing individual files that make up an activity (e.g. Activity 1a Game board, Activity 1b Game cards, etc)

New for January 2012, users can also download ready-to-go packs, which include the relevant extract from the Teachers' notes, accompanying curriculum references from the Curriculum mapping guide, and all activity parts together in one downloadable file.

Sample activities

Office of fair trading