Entry Exposure
First contact with work, tools, standards, role expectations, and professional environments.
Pathway Framework
The 6-Rung Career Ladder makes progression visible.
A pathway is useful only when each rung makes the next one reachable. This framework helps institutions inspect where people lose access, momentum, or legibility.
Starter Skill
Practical capability that proves readiness for structured development and supervised contribution.
Formal Qualification
Recognised learning that strengthens access when connected to real work pathways.
Skilled Role
Productive participation with clear standards, measurable contribution, and role fit.
Advanced Role
Specialised responsibility, judgement, repeatable performance, and deeper domain capability.
Career Peak
Leadership, mastery, ownership, independent economic agency, or durable progression.
How to use the framework
Use the ladder to ask where the current system loses people: before exposure, between learning and proof, between qualification and work, or between entry and progression. The framework is not a motivational ladder. It is a diagnostic model for designing clearer access systems.
Read Working Paper 001 for the wider pathway design argument.