Professional Skills Accelerator
Alongside their degree the School of Public Policy requires that students complete the Professional Skills Accelerator, an extensive and tailored programme designed to complement the skills and insights that students gain as part of the taught curriculum and equip them with the necessary skills for the next step in their career.
Students benefit from a series of training seminars with experienced practitioners and experts in key areas of professional development such as leadership, negotiation and effective communication. There are also practical workshops on interview preparation, networking, and CV development.
The Accelerator is a core part of the SPP’s provision. Each session is designed to bridge the gap between sophisticated theory and effective practice, and give students the opportunity to develop the skills required of highly capable public policy professionals.
Details of the 2026/27 Professional Skills Accelerator are to be confirmed and will be formally launched to new SPP students during the Welcome period. Students must complete 4 sessions across the first year of their programme. The sessions during the Autumn and Winter terms take place at weekends, and those in the Spring Term are scheduled on weekdays in and around the exam period. Upon completion, SPP students are eligible to receive the Professional Skills Accelerator certificate.
In 2025-26, we had the pleasure of running the following sessions with external and internal facilitators:
- Effective Communications - Delia Lloyd (Communications Consultant)
- Media Training and Podcasting - Barkha Dutt (Television journalist and author)
- Data Visualisation - LSE's Digital Skills Lab
- Negotiation - Matt Mulford (Executive Education Director)
- Ethics in Public Policy - Eve Poole (Author and leadership/governance expert)
- Leadership - Kathy Pavid (Senior leadership consultant and executive coach)
- Political Campaigning- Mae Dobbs (Digital & political consultant)
- Crisis Leadership - Professor Alexander Evans
- Interview Skills - Professor Alexander Evans and a panel of experienced interviewers
- Managing People and Behaviours - Professor Alexander Evans
- Networking and Job Hunting - Professor Alexander Evans
- CV's and LinkedIn - Professor Alexander Evans
The Professional Skills Accelerator is a great programme… the classes support the soft-skills I need to be ready in the office setting. I attended 4 classes... all of them were great and I understood more about myself, my strengths and weaknesses, also how to improve them. Thank you!
I acquired several practical tools and pieces of advice that I will take from the session into my future career.
FAQ's
All SPP students are required to participate in a minimum of four Professional Skills Accelerator sessions during the first year of their programme and to submit a short piece of reflective writing in Autumn and Spring Term. Students will be awarded the School of Public Policy’s Professional Skills Accelerator certificate at the end of the year in June.
Yes! Whilst you will technically be a second-year student, as you will be joining LSE for the first time you are able to participate. The requirements of the Professional Skills Accelerator are the same for you as for first-year students and these will be explained in full once you join the School of Public Policy, including at a launch of the Professional Skills Accelerator during the Welcome period in September.
Sessions take place during the Welcome period in September, and at weekends during Autumn and Winter Term as well as during Reading Week. In Spring Term, the sessions are on weekdays and scheduled around SPP exams. Students will receive information by email about how to sign up at the start of each term.
Students should plan to attend one session in Autumn Term and another in Winter Term. We provide an indicative schedule during the Welcome period in September, which includes details of all the sessions planned for Spring Term, so that students can plan their time effectively in order to fulfil the attendance requirement of four sessions.
There will be a full launch of the Professional Skills Accelerator during the Welcome period in September. We provide additional information to students by email and in the weekly Bulletin newsletter. The Professional Skills Accelerator also has its own Moodle page, which contains the material from all the sessions.