In a collaboration set to boost young peoples’ skills, Heathrow Airport and Skills Builder have joined forces to deliver impactful Essential Skills Masterclasses. Accredited at Skills Builder Impact Level 3, these sessions set students up to explore careers within the global hub of Heathrow.

Piloted in 2020, this latest initiative has expanded to welcome four colleges in total: Hammersmith, Harrow Weald, Uxbridge College, and Southall College, and has boosted the essential skills of 120 students.

The Masterclass sessions, run jointly by Skills Builder and Heathrow, support mainstream and SEN students on a journey to apply the eight essential employability skills, delivered across two sessions and two terms, including:

• Q&A workshop facilitated by Heathrow volunteers 
• Taking on a challenging airport improvement task, where students will work with Heathrow volunteers to develop decision making through leadership and teamwork
• Designing a sustainable innovation to reduce waste at the airport, linking to Heathrow's commitment to its sustainability goals, fostering creativity and problem solving skills. 
• Goal setting using staying positive and aiming high skills, students will reflect on their learnings to develop SMART goals for refining one essential skill and begin creating a skills-based CV. 

These Masterclasses have been a unique and targeted way to develop opportunities for young people locally to develop their essential skills, helping set them up for the future, while building their knowledge of Heathrow as an employer in the area, with diverse career paths available. 

Those involved in the first round of sessions had positive experience, with Harrow Weald college reflecting on their work with essential skills:

“Our college is working toward a Gold Award, as we have seen the impact that building skills can have on [students’] career and higher education prospects”, Harrow Weald College.

“This is my third year working with Skills Builder and I’ve not seen one class that’s not been engaged. The students were enthralled”, Farzana Mannan, Personal Assistant to the Principal, Harrow Weald College.

Students taking part in sessions reflected on their own skills, such as leadership which got them thinking about how they already use them and how they apply to roles at the airport – so much so that students asked whether they could work at Heathrow.

To learn more about the impactful and bespoke ways your organisation can embed the Skills Builder Framework, download a prospectus.