The ethos of start early matches the vision of our careers programme already embedded in school. Introduction of Skills Leaders in KS3 has had a great impact on raising the awareness and importance of the essential skills with our younger students. Essential skills have been sign posted in all curriculum plans across school and especially in our citizenship curriculum followed by all tutor groups across the school. Students in our Sixth Form as part of Tomorrows Teachers programme have taken part in workshops looking at how the essential skills will impact their choices in the future. Essential skills are communicated and used with our transition events involving Year 5 and 6 during transition days and puzzle day events.

Tutors track their groups progress against the essential skills steps during citizenship lessons half termly using the Skills Builder Hub in KS3 and KS4. From the curriculum plans, each group has a skill focus each half term which tutors measure against. From the HUB reports the school can then monitor the whole picture across students. Different focus groups, including our Inspires and SEA (Skills, Employability and Aspirations) groups use Skills Builder Benchmark assessment to assess their skills in more detail. All students from Year 7 to 11 record their careers activities against the skills in a specially designed form to act as a careers diary for students. All work-related learning activities are assessed against the skills and have been refined to support discussions between students, staff and employers. During our Year 6 transition, students are tasked to receive signatures on a card when they have displayed an essential skill.

All staff regularly and explicitly include the essential skills in their lessons with support of classroom displays and visuals on the work. In citizenship there is teaching of the skills built into the PowerPoints at the start and end of lessons to ensure all form tutors are regularly teaching the skills. To do this effectively, staff use information from the Hub assessments to decide next steps for their class. Focus groups in school participate in self-assessment against the skills and workshops discussing the skills. During Year 11 RONI (Risk of NEET Indicator) group discussion with parents, skills are highlighted to support conversations with students and parents.

Careers champions and Skills Leaders under the leadership of the Careers Leader drive the use of essential skills across the school community. There are many examples where essential skills are used explicitly in lessons. Our extra-curricular has been linked to essential skills and at the start of every academic year when an extra-curricular activity is launched, staff have to record which skills it will develop. We have a reward system where all staff in school regularly acknowledge students work towards the essential skills via a central school reward system. Good practise is regularly shared through email groups and school CPD. The Careers Leader has spoken at Skills Builder network events to share best practise with other schools who are engaged with the accelerator or accelerator+ programme.

We have many links to different partnerships which support our schools career vision and the importance of the essential skills. They are linked to our annual careers fair which is supported by our Year 7 and 8 skills leaders. We have an annual Year 8 enterprise drop down day which is focussed around all skills featuring videos from different members of staff in school talking about each skill. This year we will deliver the Chocolate Challenge Day for Year 7 which has been simplified to fit our students but still retains tasks which target each skill. Following the use of flexible support with Skills, Sophie Deaville, Year 8 will be launching their own essential skill house competition involving students and staff (Making Bacon). The essential skills work done by Year 7 and 8 leaders has fed into our annual celebration evenings, where one leader from each year group was awarded Careers Champion for the year. The essential skills are also incorporated as part of our careers fair.