Skills Builder

This content was written by

Ashton Community Science College

Context

Ashton Community Science College (ACSC) is a secondary school situated in the heart of the city of Preston. We are a true community school and provide our students with not only academic success, but also develop their personal skills and attributes for life after ACSC. We have approximately 45% Pupil Premium students and large cohorts of under achieving boys.

Overall impact

We are pleased to see that students now know and can recall key employability skills and are able to discuss when they have used them.

Keep it simple

To widen understanding of the essential skills we updated our website to reflect our focus on these essential skills. We incorporated Skills Builder into our daily Form Time programme and created resources which ran along side the online videos. We also created a specific merit award for students who demonstrate one of the Skills Builder attributes in lessons.

Start early, keep going

We decided to get involved with Skills Builder to raise aspirations for all and to provide opportunities for our students to reflect on key employability skills. We wanted all of students to be involved with essential skills learning so our programme starts in Year 7, and runs all the way through to Year 11.

Measure it

Too often our students did not know skills that would be beneficial in the future, but also which skills they did already possess and use regularly. To address this, each student receives their own Skills Builder workbook for each academic year which allows them to reflect and to track progress in how their essential skills develop over time.

Focus tightly

The aim for embedding Skills Builder into our school curriculum was to ensure our students know a wide range of essential skills, understand that they are transferable and be able to recognise their own skills and highlight which they need to improve. Our form tutors use the Skills Builder Hub to directly teach short lessons to build essential skills, and they are also offered the opportunity to take part in regular training.

Keep practising

We have an outstanding student leadership programme, including the school council, which allows our students the chance to develop their skills. We also have whole school competitions and projects such as Dragon's Den.

Bring it to life

We ask employers to discuss the Skills Builder skills in detail when they visit school or carry out an online interview. This again brings to life the importance of these skills and allows students to listen to how they are used in the world of work.

What's next

We would like to build off the work so far to better engage parents and communicate with them around the importance of essential skills and how they support their children's development.

North West England

United Kingdom

Secondary

Ashton Community Science College