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Undershaw is an independent specialist school providing a high standard of care and education for children aged 9 to 19 with mild to moderate learning difficulties and additional needs, such as ASD, cerebral palsy, hemiplegia, and medical vulnerabilities. Our focus on leading SEND Education, integrated therapy, employability, and wellbeing ensures that our provision is bespoke to each individual student. The process of shaping a rich, deep and dynamic curriculum for a SEND school is a multi-faceted challenge. Skills Builder provides us with a framework that enables growth through the school and into our post 16 employability curriculum where it truly comes to life in our work-experience setting, and students can apply the skills in 'real-life' setting. On a macro level, the Skills Builder Programme fully aligns with the Undershaw Vision and Values. We firmly believe that if we can equip a young person with these crucial life skills through their journey with us, they will springboard from Undershaw into independent adulthood with confidence. We are passionate about; enabling our young people to aim high, build confidence through teaching, and provide rich experiences, all whilst lighting the fire of aspiration and embedding understanding and self-belief. We believed that the Skills Builder Framework and resources would be a fantastic addition to our offer and inspire creative approaches to teaching these important transferable Life Skills.
Overall impact
We utilise the Skills Builder programme throughout the school in order to identify, coach, and develop the life skills necessary for our students to thrive in their lives beyond the school gates. The 8 essential skills are vital for ensuring students can inter-relate effectively at school, at home, in employment, and form impactful relationships beyond their school days. Life skills are vital for all of us, in every walk of life. Undershaw is putting them at the heart of our teaching and learning, and in doing so, we ensure that our students build a rich landscape from which to launch their careers.' - Emma West, Headteacher.
'I have helped my communication skills grow by ordering tickets and I have done some problem-solving by working out the bus and train times. But I've also learned to stay positive because when coming back from Guildford, the train got delayed by 40 minutes! Overall, this is helping me become more of an independent traveller than I used to be.' - Post 16 Student, Undershaw.
'I have a bank full of evidence to support me going forward. Looking forward, I now realise how much it could prove to help me. I have learned how employers look at the skills of individuals and how the Skills Builder Diploma gave me the extra support. Not only does it give me confidence knowing I have all these skills under my belt, but it will support me going forward, especially when applying for jobs.' - BB, Undershaw Student
Keep it simple
The essential skills are in every classroom and communal areas. They are included in lesson plans, assembly presentations, guest speaker presentations and CPD training is delivered to staff including any new staff that join in year. We talk about the Skills Builder programme and our bespoke Undershaw Diploma, which is accredited recognition of the skills, as an integral part of the curriculum at Undershaw. Equal importance is placed on the skills curriculum and the academic curriculum; this is upheld and fully embraced by the headteacher and all staff in all contexts when the curriculum is discussed and shared. Weekly Discovery Days are a great opportunity to focus on skills, supporting students to evidence those skills. Guest speakers are made aware of the 8 essential skills and encouraged to identify skills that they have and have needed in their industry, this was highlighted during our careers week programme. Staff and students can award skills spotter stickers to each other, and we also have staff skills spotters who award badges! We are excited to launch a new recruitment process for TA recruitment that includes the essential skills framework and explicit steps. Essential skills are highlight in internal and external marketing.
Start early, keep going
We have a feature article on our website and the skills are clearly celebrated through Curriculum and Faculty Spotlights. We refer to Skills Builder essential skills during whole school Open Day and Post 16 Open Evening presentations for prospective parents. Essential skills are threaded through the curriculum from Key Stage 2 to Post 16. There is alocated time on the timetable to develop essential skills. House Points are allocated by demonstrating essential skills. The Undershaw Diploma was launched to parents sharing the Universal Framework. The Headteacher's Weekly Newsletter includes the skills. There is a Homezone skills challenge shared in the Friday Newsletter every week. We are reviewing our Careers and Work Experience Policy and ensured that the essential skills were included alongside the Gatsby Benchmarks. We identify skills specifically when posting on our social media platforms; for example. a post about our young rotary club: 'so many skills demonstrated by the team..creativity, teamwork, aiming high and leadership'. As part of our Careers Strategic Plan, we are looking at how we can link the essential skills steps to EHCP targets working with the SEND team.
Measure it
Our AQA accredited Undershaw Diploma that has been designed using the Skills Builder essential skills steps has been a fantastic way to map individual progress from KS2 to Post 16. On completion of each level, students receive an AQA Certificate, Bronze 'Getting Started' , Silver 'Intermediate', Gold 'Advanced' and Platinum 'Mastery'. We have found self-reflection really powerful - any student reflection forms, whether that be an industry insight, work experience, guest speakers or college visits, have the essential skills on them. All of the skills are on our CRM and the House Points are allocated for specific skills. Students are awarded end of term certificates for these. The essential skills as part of the Undershaw Diploma are linked with KPIs for each Key Sage on the curriculum which is shared with all stake holders. The progress is shared with students and families in end of year reports - this really illustrates our holistic approach to building confidence in essential skills alongside their academic learning.
Focus tightly
KS2 and KS3 have weekly Discovery Day activities; for example, John Muir, DofE, Rotary Club, Arts Award Drama, Arts Award Art, Sports Leaders, Eco Warriors and Journalism Club. All Discovery Day Activities and Enrichments have essential skills attached. For example, Journalism Club links to Listening & Creativity. KS4 are given opportunities to develop essential skills through their classes and encouraged to discuss progress that they have made outside of school. Over 70% of our Year 10 students have made clear progression through their steps for academic year 22 - 23. Post 16 have specific communication, independence and work experience sessions where they can reflect on the essential skills they are demonstrating. This is greatly supported through the BTEC Work skills Programme. We have purchased Print Shop Equipment for an onsite work experience run by the Post 16 Students - the essential skills are highlighted in the different job descriptions that the students will have the opportunity to apply for. Our Faculty Spotlight highlighted the range of activities including our Challenge Day, Café Tricolore and the Careers Guest Speakers and how that linked to essential skills development.
Keep practising
We treat the Skills Builder curriculum at Undershaw as an integral part of the curriculum and everyday. It is at the core of everything we do, so students practice their essential skills as a matter of course throughout their day at Undershaw. In addition, we have a wide range of enrichment opportunities which provide the opportunity to practice skills in different contexts. We held a whole school Christmas Fair where students have individual stalls, which was a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate a variety of essential skills. With each assembly, skills are identified either in the slides, or the assembly host will identify skills needed/being demonstrated. During enrichments students are encouraged to focus on specific skills i.e Chess Club using Creativity & Problem Solving. Post 16 have school ambassador roles/Food bank volunteering/work experience - all developing essential skills. Our Project Based Learning Curriculum will include essential skills in planning and through the end points are often an additional opportunity for students to practice other skills; for example, during 'Where Does My Cereal Come From' one of the activities was creating a Cereal Box, linking to Maths & Problem Solving, Art & Creativity, and presenting ideas to parents, Drama & Communication.
Bring it to life
When we visit industries or have guest speakers, we ask the host/guest speaker to identify what essential skills are used in that industry/specific roles. This was highlighted with our guest speakers for Careers Week, all were sent the skills and icons and asked to incorporate our skills language into their presentations. We ask the students to reflect on the guest speaker/industry visit to remind themselves of the skills and embed that understanding which we have found to be really powerful. Year 9 Options - we held a session to support making option choices and we did some work around Essential Skills/ Strengths/Interests/Aspirations and discussed how strengths and skills helped to inform the Options choices and how they linked to future careers. We have introduced a brand-new Vocational Profile that clearly links to Aiming High Step 6: I set goals informed by an understanding of what is needed. We recently met with our main Work Experience partner to discuss the staff being given 'Skills Badges' when they have demonstrated one of the Skills and we are including the essential skills as part of our induction pack for new partnerships.
What's next
We have decided to join the Accelerator + membership for 2023/24 to continue to deliver and build on this outstanding essential skills programme. We plan to launch our new staff recruitment process. We will continue to deliver a high standard of staff CPD so that all staff are confident to name each of the skills and help to support students understanding. Whether in the office employed as support staff, the therapy team or 100% student facing all staff are skills ambassadors. We will continue to promote skills spotters and have stickers printed for September so that each class has skill spotter roles and can identify skills during breaks as well as lesson times. We have met with The President of Haslemere & District Chamber of Trade & Commerce with a view to hosting an event at Undershaw to promote Work Experience and how to support this through identifying essential skills as part of their employee and staff development initiatives. We have identified a target on the SDP to work with the Head of Send to link essential skills to EHCP targets.
