At Bridgelea School we want to help our children, families, and communities to understand themselves and others more. As a Nurture school, we feel that the nurture principles and approaches support us to develop and embed a nurturing culture throughout the school, enhancing teaching and learning. The essential skills complement this nurturing ethos. At Bridgelea we believe that they are important all the way through education, and at all ages and we understand them developmentally. All classes and children have been introduced to the essential skills this year and have accessed the challenge days, adapted assemblies, and projects. Links between the essential skills and the Boxall Profile developmental strands are intuitive and an area to explore further for example ‘Giving purposeful attention’ (Strand A) underpins the essential skill of Communication. Similarly, ‘Participating constructively’ (Strand B) links with the essential skill of Teamwork. We continue to give our students the opportunity to build their essential skills through assemblies, projects, challenge days and explicit teaching of the skills using the lessons from the Skills Builder hub. Where developmentally appropriate, we have used the skills stories on the Skills Builder Hub to introduce the skills to our ‘youngest’ children so that from the very start of their time with us at Bridgelea, children see the value we place on learning essential skills.

As a school measurement of the essential skills was initially the most challenging. Teachers accessed training on how to complete and use the Skills Builder Framework and were introduced to group-level assessments. Progression using the expanded frameworks has also been shared. To develop this further, we then clarified how this assessment can be used to inform teaching across the curriculum and how it compliments existing assessments such as the Boxall Profile. The last academic year we used the passports to recognise and share progress within the skills with children and parents. This is something we would like to continue to develop to support children's assessment of skills and enhance the teachers differentiation in the projects and challenge days. Skills Builder has been added to the half-termly monitoring and assessment cycle timetable. Teachers carry out formative assessments throughout these half terms but then this is monitored in a summative assessment at the end of each half term using the skills builder passports. Plans for 2024/2025 are to include the Skills builder passport outcomes as part of the end of year report in order to embed this as our character curriculum.

To support the building of essential skills, the focused time has been available to directly build the skills and to allow for deliberate practice. This has included both challenge days and projects and has been further enhanced with half-term skill foci and assemblies. Teachers have accessed training from a skilled facilitator at Skills Builder to ensure they have a thorough introduction to Skills Builder, the resources that are available and how to use the online platform to assess. In addition to this, teachers have access to training on the Skills Hub and are starting to become familiar with the range of resources that this offers to support the development of skills. Feedback from the challenge days and projects has been that the teachers need to develop more confidence in the assessment of the skills to focus the activities on the children’s next steps. In some cases, the emphasis has been on the activities, rather than thinking about what skills children are learning and whether they are pitched at the right level. To further support teachers with this, we are receiving training from a skilled Senior Education Associate prior to the challenge days so that our teachers can feel fully supported to deliver the challenge days with confidence. Half termly assemblies have been sent out to introduce the focus skill at the beginning of the half term, the children will then all have highlighted in their rooms the focus skill and be signposted to and rewarded when they are demonstrating the skill. Each child will be involved in a challenge day during the Autumn and Spring half terms, these will also involve inviting parents in so that the children can ‘showcase’ their focus skill. In the Summer term, each milepost will have their own project to complete which will include sessions where the children will be explicitly taught a range of the skills for life. In addition to this, some staff are weaving the short lessons from the Skills Builder Hub into their daily teaching, in order to support the development of skills on a more frequent basis when they see areas of need arise. The skills builder sessions are also being used for interventions where appropriate.

Alongside the focused time on building the essential skills, some staff provide wider reinforcement and practice across the curriculum. The whole school and class displays reinforce essential skills. We are working on developing regular opportunities for children to practice and recognise essential skills in the wider curriculum. Some subject leaders have mapped the skills onto the curriculum maps for their subject to help identify opportunities to practise key skills. Some teachers are also rewarding skills in the wider curriculum by awarding Dojo points for skills. We are now recognising the skills in enrichment activities more explicitly. Teaching assistants have received training on how to reinforce these skills during playtime and also award Dojos and raffle tickets for the appropriate use of essential skills. External providers, such as the Forest School, have been briefed on the essential skills and they help to reinforce these through extracurricular activities.

The challenge days and projects have supported all children to have experiences to apply essential skills. Some children have also accessed a Virtual Employer session with the Guinness Partnership and enjoyed this opportunity. The school plans a range of curriculum enrichment activities supporting all children to connect with their wider communities whilst developing and practising the essential skills in real life situations. Children will be reflecting on this in their passports. During trips such as Simply Cycling and Crucial Crew, staff relate the experiences the children have on these to the skills and made explicit links for the children so that they could see the purpose of developing their essential skills in relation to improving themselves to be better at extracurricular activities, as well as job roles. All students have enjoyed projects and challenge days which help them to apply the skills in different contexts and understand their transferability.