In Conversation With: Anna Fritz, Head of Product at EAL

ANNA FRITZ, HEAD OF PRODUCT AT EAL

Anna ensures EAL develops and delivers qualifications and assessments that help people meet their professional goals and improve life outcomes. She has been a Strategist at OCR-Cambridge Assessment and a Senior Industry & Products Manager at City & Guilds. Anna also has a Certificate in Educational Assessment, Testing, and Measurement from the University of Cambridge.

What is your role within EAL?

As Head of Product at EAL, the specialist skills partner for the engineering and manufacturing sector and related industries including rail, I ensure we develop and deliver qualifications and assessments that address the skills needs in the industries we operate in and help people meet their professional goals and improve life outcomes.

My career spans different industries, but I have always worked in roles where market insight, analysis, strategic planning, and portfolio management are at the heart of what I do. Over the last 13 years, I have worked in roles in Awarding Organisations and End-Point Organisations offering a wide range of qualifications, apprenticeships, and other unregulated products for tutors and learners in the UK and Internationally.

What I particularly like about my role at EAL is its focus on having rich learning pathways for learners of all ages and experience levels based on the skills and knowledge needed in the industry. At EAL, we offer learning solutions across smaller, niche occupations and subsectors for the wider benefit of the sector, which really underpins our strong charitable ethos. This gives my role a purpose and motivation to succeed even when things get tough.

My team of qualification and EPA developers, assessment and learning resource developers and industry engagement teams work tirelessly to ensure EAL’s portfolio of rail qualifications is developed to meet industry standards and help support the UK’s growing demand for skilled workers in the rail sector. As well as delivering the knowledge to promote a high level of safety-critical working, our qualifications are relevant for both new learners and the existing workforce, raising skills levels and supporting progression routes.

What does sustainability mean to you?

At EAL, I lead EAL’s inclusive approach to ensure engineers and employers have the right skills at the right time to seize the opportunities created by sustainability skills, green technologies and the net-zero transition.

We want as many engineers and employers as possible to acquire sustainability and green technology skills to the right standards.

We are developing new sustainability and green technology focused qualifications and assessments. We are also embedding sustainability and green technology skills throughout our existing qualifications. Where that isn’t practicably possible, we will point educators towards sustainability-focused support resources. This dual approach will help to ensure more people and businesses can have the relevant skills to play a role in creating a sustainable world.

Tell us about EAL

Our qualifications, assessments and skills solutions are designed and maintained by industry and vocational education and training experts who understand the current and future needs of educators, training providers, employers and engineers in the engineering and manufacturing sector, and related industries.

Within rail, we offer a range of high-quality qualifications to meet the needs of all employers. They have been designed in consultation with the sector and cover a range of levels and disciplines, including track, signalling, telecoms, electrification, traction and rolling stock. Our qualifications map to apprenticeship standards and National Occupational Standards (NOS), where relevant, making them a robust option for any business specialising in the rail sector in England and across the Nations.

With our extensive knowledge and experience of the rail industry and our commitment to quality, we can help educators, training providers and employers deliver a flexible, engaging and valuable learning experience.

With the coming launch of Great British Railways, how do you anticipate your place within the supply chain changing?

The creation of GBR presents both challenges and opportunities for awarding organisations in the rail sector. It remains to be seen what the final details of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill will be. Either way, there is much to do for our team over the coming months to carve a space in the new landscape.

EAL will seek to understand GBR’s mandate and future responsibilities, which were previously split between different bodies. We will then focus on collaboration and partnership activities to ensure our qualifications and EPA align with GBR’s strategic goals, especially around issues like passenger experience, sustainability, and technological innovation.

We anticipate that GBR will likely prioritise greener rail services (reducing emissions, increasing electrification, and improving energy efficiency), and we will prepare to support sustainability-related qualifications. This may include qualifications in electric rail engineering, sustainable infrastructure management, and carbon reduction in rail operations, as well as relevant qualifications in emerging technologies.

Furthermore, we will need to closely follow developments in regulatory frameworks and adapt training materials and qualifications to reflect any new safety protocols, compliance requirements, or regulatory changes that GBR institutes.

We will continue to engage with employers – rail operators, infrastructure companies, and industry bodies – to ensure that we maintain continuity in qualification and accreditation during this period of change and our qualifications reflect the current and future needs of the sector.

What are some of the biggest challenges this sector currently faces?

Much of the UK’s rail infrastructure dates back over a century and needs ongoing maintenance or expensive upgrades. This in turn makes it less resilient to extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall and heatwaves, that are becoming more frequent due to climate change. Existing infrastructure also faces capacity limits, especially in urban areas.

These interwoven infrastructure challenges then impact service reliability and passenger confidence.

Having a whole-system view of the rail network under Great British Railways should help the UK make smarter investments and ultimately help to meet The UK’s Net Zero target.

We are going to need both the skills to maintain ageing infrastructure and to seize the opportunities created by advancements in rail technology to create efficiencies and raise the quality of service.

How can we make the rail industry a place people want to work in?

Louise Haigh, the Secretary of State for Transport, has talked about Great British Railways being a ‘cultural reset’ for the UK’s rail industry.

I hope that this reset sees the industry communicate that it has a growing demand for skilled workers and that it offers exciting progression routes for both new learners and the existing workforce.

We need to bring pride back to the skills and ingenuity needed to maintain ageing infrastructure and make it more resilient to new challenges like climate change. While also ensuring that people are aware of the wide range of opportunities the sector can offer due to advancement in innovative signalling technologies and automation, cybersecurity, digital ticketing and customer data, AI and predictive maintenance and sustainability and electrification.

The rail industry shares similar recruitment and diversity challenges to those faced by other industries across the UK’s engineering and manufacturing sector. Enginuity, our group charity organisation, reinvest our surplus in charitable activities that focus on solving shared cross industry skills challenges which includes the rail engineering sector.

What is the biggest skills challenge facing the rail industry?

The rail industry in the UK has an ageing workforce, with a significant number of skilled workers nearing retirement age. Many of these workers have decades of experience, and as they retire, there aren’t enough younger workers coming through to fill their positions. This results in a loss of valuable expertise and a gap in knowledge transfer to the next generation.

The rail sector relies heavily on STEM skills, but the UK faces a broader shortage of graduates and apprentices in these fields. The rail industry needs more young people to enter careers in engineering, infrastructure, and technical roles, but it is often competing with other industries, like technology and aerospace, which are perceived as offering more attractive career paths.

How can awarding organisations better support the rail industry?

I think that awarding organisations can better support the rail industry by not just seeing it as a customer for their qualifications. They need to really act in its best interests.

EAL’s mission aligns to this approach – we collectively strive to enable people have the right engineering skills, at the right time, to keep up with changing industry needs and the net-zero transition. As we are doing with sustainability and green technology skills, we will consider whether other advancements are best served by developing new qualifications and assessments, embedding new skills throughout our existing qualifications, or both approaches.

EAL represent rail employers in policy discussions around technical education and works collaboratively with them to create and review apprenticeship standards, qualifications and training programmes.

We constructively challenge the way things are done, we apply the same quality to everything we do regardless of the size of the market it serves, and through our parent charity Enginuity, we reinvest our surplus in charitable activities to find new solutions to skills gaps faced by engineering employers and industries like rail.

Ultimately, we are driven by engineers and employers in UK rail having the right skills, recognised to the right standards, at the right time.