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The Edge is a small but heavily oversubscribed 11-16 Alternative Provision school based in Northfield, which has been given a category of 'good' in its most recent inspection in 2021 and continues to go from strength to strength. The afore mentioned OFSTED report states that 'staff provide pupils with exceptional pastoral support' and this is at the core of who we are and what we do. Students arrive to us from mainstream schools on the verge of permanent exclusion and disengaged with education, with an average attendance of only 52%. 90% of our students are classed as 'most disadvantaged' in terms of poverty and safeguarding vulnerability, 85% are Pupil Premium and 100% have some form of SEN. The Edge Pledge is central to every aspect of Edge life. We want students to be SAFE: to make positive choices to keep themselves and others safe. READY: to succeed in the world beyond school. RESPECTFUL: to treat and value others as equal individuals. We use Skills Builder Accelerator to shape our whole curriculum, each subject maps its curriculum intent document
Overall impact
We have found the Accelerator programme really complements our ethos of 'Safe, Ready and Respectful', which is the heart of what we do at The Edge. We work hard to ensure our students take advantage of every opportunity, responsibility and experience in life. Our curriculum is designed to prepare young people to be ready to move on to their next stage safely and produce respectful, responsible citizens. We have found that the Skills Builder Framework gives us a common language to celebrate the achievements our students make every day that may not be reflected by exam results. I have really benefitted from the regular opportunities to plan and evaluate our programme with Skills Builder staff. In a busy schedule it has been great to take time out and reflect on the progress we have made and plan for the future, these meetings have been like coaching sessions for me to advance my practice.
Keep it simple
The essential skills are embedded in every part of Edge life from the welcome leaflets, curriculum intent documents and KS3 schemes of work right through to the certification and rewards that students take home each week. We celebrate each individual students' strengths and support them to recognise their areas for development and set themselves targets to improve. Progress against the essential skills is shared with parents/carers and discussed regularly with commissioning schools. Skills are referenced in every classroom, pastoral intervention, on our website and in parent meetings. We ensure all staff attend CPD sessions so the essential skills language is part of the whole school culture rather than the responsibility of teachers only.
Start early, keep going
Our Skills Builder journey started by using Benchmark with a few small pilot groups. We found that the skills profile was a good indicator of how successfully students could reintegrate in to a mainstream classroom setting. This allowed us to target bespoke interventions to support these students to access the curriculum. We now benchmark all new students on arrival to the school and use this data as the driving force behind the KS3 curriculum. Each KS4 curriculum area is mapped against the essential skills to ensure we provide constant opportunities to build the skills. Parents have access to the Homezone through our website and regularly receive skills postcards celebrating their child's progress and achievement. As an alternative provision we strive to provide an engaging and active curriculum, every enrichment activity is mapped against the skills and evaluated in terms of how many skills the students had the opportunity to build upon.
Measure it
As part of our innovative, short-stay Connect programme we use each students' skills profile to devise a bespoke programme of work that builds on the pupils' next steps. Each curriculum area takes responsibility for one or two skills and triangulates the student benchmark with the teachers' own assessment. We then plan a variety of activities to develop the next steps and collect a portfolio of evidence to RAG rate the student against the skill. Where possible we complete accredited awards that reflect the skills and build towards a record of achievement for the pupils to take away with them when they leave. We then share the benchmark profile and the portfolio of work with the students' referring schools to show what progress has been made and what areas need further work.
Focus tightly
Teaching, pastoral and intervention staff have all had Skills Builder CPD on how to use the hub to devise activities that will build the skills for individuals and groups. Activities are planned and evaluated using the skills builder framework and are targeted to the appropriate step for each student. Time is given in afterschool working groups to plan together with support staff and ensure opportunities are given to develop each step. Senior leaders monitor this planning and next steps will be to complete learning walks focused on quality assuring the delivery of the activities for each essential skill.
Keep practising
Although each subject area has to map their curriculum against all eight skills, they also take responsibility for a skill. The school timetable has been colour coded to reflect the skills and the KS3 subjects have been renamed in line with the skills. For example, in KS3 'Create' lessons students will be focussing on developing their creativity skills through Art and Food technology. The staff delivering will provide activities that allow students to experience each step of the skill but are also reinforcing the cross-curricular aspect of essential skills by making reference to and celebrating all eight skills. Student achievement is recognised and celebrated by all staff, our current ratio of positive to negative feedback is around 4:1. Knowledge of the framework gives all staff from reception to the canteen specific, skills based praise they can log to recognise the achievements that are made outside of the classroom.
Bring it to life
Every department plans a range of enrichment opportunities for learning outside of the classroom, in the activity proposal form they indicate what skills they expect students to develop and on return they evaluate which skills were practised. All students then choose an enrichment activity every Friday afternoon, again staff are expected to plan and evaluate the activity in line with the skills and complete praise certificates on a Friday that are posted home. In line with Gatsby benchmarks we arrange a variety of meaningful encounters for all students with employers, colleges, apprenticeship providers and universities and map these against the skills. Termly evaluations allow us to see which skills need further focus.
What's next
Working with disengaged students means we often struggle to get parents on board. We would like to develop a simple, fast way of sharing progress with parents and involving them more on their child's journey. Our next steps are also to quality assure the provision we already have in place, allowing staff to share good practice and learn from each other. We work with around 50 feeder school in total and would love to use our out-reach programme to support those schools to continue to support the students on their Skills Builder journey when they return to mainstream school.
