Buckden CE Primary Academy is a church school in a semi-rural setting. We have written our bespoke School Curriculum around the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals with a view to prepare our children for their future. We recognised that this was a knowledge rich curriculum and needed the balance of skills included as we were aware that there was a request from industry that this was essential for our future workforce.
The Accelerator programme has had a big impact on the whole school, as it has really helped us to embed the skills builder into the whole curriculum and wider school life, as having the reviews with Bethan, breakfast meetings have been full of great ideas that we have been able to bring to our school. I think the highlight has been the skills builder champions as they have been able to talk so eloquently about the skills that they see in their classroom, especially on project days but more importantly in everyday lessons and experiences and how they are working to improve them. We have a new Home School Hub and our pastoral team are helping to spread the word and direct the parents towards the homezone. In our new parents evenings I have a slot now, so I can talk about skills builder with parents as their children start. I feel that it is embedded in our school but there will always be areas to improve.
I would like to use next year to continue to embed skills builder even more. One of the ways is to move the floor books up with the cohort so they are able to reflect on the progress they have made and consider the next step. I will be planning to have an Aspirations Day so that we can really bring the skills to life and get the children to make the links with the wider world. I hope with the help of our new home hub launching that we can get more of our parents involved in understanding how they can help through using the home zone.