The idea

Take free, government-backed AI skills training to improve your job prospects.

Who the evidence applies to: UK adults in work or looking for work who want basic, recognised AI skills to use in their current or next job

The government expanded its free AI Skills Boost programme in January 2026 with a target of 10 million workers by 2030.

How we checked

This is an evidence check: we looked for large studies, official statistics and published datasets, opened every source, and had a second researcher check each figure against them. 6 sources, listed below.

Costs

Start-up cost
£0 (free courses exist)
Effort
low

What the evidence shows

Since January 2026 every adult in the UK has been eligible for free AI foundations courses through the government's AI Skills Boost programme, benchmarked by Skills England and built with partners including Google, Microsoft, IBM and Accenture. Job advert studies show employers pay more for AI skills: PwC's 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer found a 56% wage premium for jobs requiring AI skills, an Oxford study of over 10 million UK vacancies found a 23% premium, and Lightcast found 28%. These premiums relate to jobs asking for AI skills, often specialist ones, so there is no direct evidence that a short foundations course alone raises pay.

What to expect: A free course can give you basic, recognised AI skills and a badge for your CV, which may help you use AI in your job and in applications. The large pay premiums in the research are linked to jobs requiring AI skills, often specialist ones, so treat foundations training as a first step rather than a pay rise in itself.

First steps

  1. Read the government's AI Skills Boost announcement on GOV.UK to find the free, benchmarked courses
  2. Pick a course that matches tasks in your own job, such as drafting text or administrative work
  3. Add the AI foundations badge to your CV and describe how you have used AI in real tasks
  4. If it proves useful, look at job adverts in your field to see which more specialist AI skills employers ask for

Limitations

Studies report averages: your own result depends on your field, skills and where you live. Figures come from the sources below and may be updated as new evidence appears.

VerdictWorks with limits

Works for some, not most.

Sources

  1. GOV.UK (28 January 2026): free AI Skills Boost courses for every UK adult, some under 20 minutes, with a virtual badge; aims to upskill 10 million workers by 2030; partners include Accenture, Google, IBM, Microsoft, the NHS and the Federation of Small Businesses gov.uk
  2. Skills England blog (28 January 2026): the AI foundation skills for work benchmark covers prompting, understanding AI risks, interpreting data and automating routine tasks skillsengland.blog.gov.uk
  3. PwC 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer (nearly 1 billion job ads): jobs requiring AI skills carry a 56% wage premium over similar roles without them prnewswire.co.uk
  4. PwC UK 2026 AI Jobs Barometer: 34.2% average wage premium for specialist AI-skilled workers in the UK; 180,000 UK postings requiring specialist AI skills pwc.co.uk
  5. University of Oxford study (over 10 million UK vacancies, 2018–2024): AI skills attract a 23% wage premium, more than a master's degree (13%) ox.ac.uk
  6. Lightcast (over 1.3 billion job postings, July 2025): roles requiring AI skills pay 28% more; 51% of such postings are outside IT and computer science lightcast.io