Skills Builder Global

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Fitzwaryn School

Context

Fitzwaryn is an Outstanding Special School for children and young people from 3 – 19 years old, whose Special Educational Needs range from Moderate Learning Difficulties through to Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties. The school is situated in Wantage, a small but growing market town in Oxfordshire. We have a fantastic, up to the minute, purpose-built environment that enables us to deliver an exciting and diverse curriculum for each and every child. We continually strive to further develop our educational offer and in recent times we have added a Horticulture area and a bike track to our outside provision. The school is organised into 11 classes including provision for EYFS and Post 16. Our dedicated staff team are committed to providing the best possible education for the pupils at the school, grasping every opportunity to provide a rich and diverse curriculum which often takes place outside the classroom. The staff team is committed to further developing their own skills and expertise through the Continuing Professional Development offered at the school. We work closely with parents, carers and other professionals to ensure we are meeting the diverse needs of all of the pupils. Our vision of ‘through learning to learn, pupils will access society’ underpins all that we do with the aim that all of the pupils who have been with us leave with the skills and knowledge they need to successfully engage in the next stage of their lives and, of course, with fantastic memories of their time at Fitzwaryn!

Overall impact

Our award application details the impact Skills Builder has had on our school. When we first became involved, it was imperative that any work linked to Skills Builder had to be firmly embedded in our curriculum offer; it couldn’t be an add-on and risk increasing teacher workload. We already had a strong focus on building essential skills and the Universal Framework gave us a more consistent vocabulary against which to peg our work. Our staff and pupils can now recognise and, more importantly, name the skills they demonstrate and continue to develop. Our careers provision is recognised as outstanding, and our Careers Lead was awarded the Careers Champion Award for 2024 by the Oxfordshire Apprenticeship Awards. Our programme is explicitly linked to the Skills Builder essential skills and starts from EYFS, right through to Year 14. This year we have achieved 100% against all the Gatsby Benchmarks.

Keep it simple

The essential skills underpin teaching and learning across the whole school, from EYFS to our 16-19 provision. Our Careers curriculum highlights a termly key skill focus for each key stage, taken from the Skills Builder essential skills list. Whenever possible, all work across the curriculum is linked to that and teachers make specific reference to the essential skills. Termly planning documents are shared with parents and contain the specific icons. Visitors to the school are greeted by Skillsbuilder display boards in the main hall; each board is colour-coded and matched to an icon and features photographs from all year groups of the skills in action. Parents love to look for images of their own child! We have a weekly assembly when pupils can share examples of work completed and the emphasis is on using the language of essential skills so that pupils know they aren’t just showing a good painting, rather they have been creative or worked in a team. During assembly, certificates are awarded to pupils for demonstrating essential skills and at the end of the year, all pupils receive a Skills Builder certificate. All classrooms have the termly focus icons on a double-sided poster in the entrance window. This is a visual reminder for the pupils in class and this also serves as a useful cue for adults entering a room; they know what they are looking for, so can give praise specifically linked to a skill. This use of consistent language reinforces the areas we are working on and importantly gives a name to the skills which may be less easy for some pupils to identify, such as Aiming High and Staying Positive.

Start early, keep going

The essential skills are embedded into teaching and learning cross the whole school, starting with our youngest learners in EYFS. All teachers in every Key Stage summarise their medium-term planning into a curriculum topic map, which is shared with parents and is also available on the school website. The termly maps detail the Intent, Implementation and Impact for each area of the curriculum and include the relevant icon for the Careers focus for that term. The Impact sections specifically detail the skills the pupils will have gained/ improved through their learning that term.

Measure it

We are a Special School, and all of our pupils have an EHCP. Over the past few years, we have reviewed our practice in writing new outcomes for the pupils. Each child has 5 main outcomes, broadly aligned with our end goals which dovetail into the strands for Pathways into Adulthood. Two of these correspond closely to the Skills Builder framework and all pupils have an outcome linked to Communication and Independence. Each outcome is then broken down into 3 termly Individual Education Plan (IEP) targets. These are assessed and reported to parents at the end of every term. The main outcome is then reviewed annually at the EHCP Annual Review meeting. Video evidence of pupils’ progress in essential skills is also saved on an online platform called MultiMe, which again is shared with parents. This is updated regularly by all teachers and monitored by SLT. Post-16 pupils are assessed and have progress tracked on a spreadsheet that we have developed using the Expanded Universal Framework. This data is reviewed by class teachers and discussed in termly Pupil Progress meetings with SLT.

Focus tightly

Our overall curriculum intent document is underpinned by the ways in which the different skills can be effectively and explicitly taught in different subject areas and build towards our end of key stage goals. Each subject curriculum is spiralled so that pupils have repeated opportunities to revisit skills and build upon prior learning. This reflects our rationale that for our learners, the actual subject content of the topic is of less importance to the skills that are being practised. Given their additional needs, our pupils need multiple opportunities to practise key skills in different contexts to consolidate learning. Weekly timetables indicate specific time dedicated to the explicit teaching of skills, be those linked to Personal, Social and Independence targets, Communication work or the weekly Maths lesson with a specific problem-solving focus.

Keep practising

In long-, medium- and short-term planning documents, specific reference is made to the explicit teaching and practising of essential skills. All our pupils have a learning disability and whilst they may not have the ability to achieve high academic success, many have, and can further develop, the essential skills needed for living a successful life as independently as possible. Our school vision is ‘through learning to learn, pupils will access society’ and every aspect of our curriculum offer is linked to that vision and building the pupils’ confidence, resilience and skills set to give them the best chance of success. Enrichment activities are carefully planned across the school and show clear progression. In the younger classes, opportunities for practising essential skills are largely based in the school environment and as the pupils move up the school and their confidence grows, the activities become more adventurous and further afield. Pupils can reflect on their strengths and areas for development in essential skills, both before and after enrichment activities. This can include café trips, theatre visits and music workshops for example. The sixth formers recently completed a visit to an Escape Room in Oxford and afterwards discussed the importance of staying positive, working as a team and effective communication- all essential in getting out! In addition, when planning for the Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award, pupils’ set themselves targets for further developing specific essential skills whilst away for the whole week.

Bring it to life

Our Careers provision has been recognised as being outstanding in the county and our Careers Lead was awarded the Careers Champion Award for 2024 by the Oxfordshire Apprenticeship Awards. Our programme is explicitly linked to the Skills Builder essential skills and starts from EYFS, with visitors into school and off-timetable days, such as Mrs Bun the Baker. This year we have achieved 100% against all the Gatsby Benchmarks. From Key Stage 3 onwards there is a clear timetable of events including employer encounters, (some of which are facilitated by Skills Builder), Enterprise Days and different levels of Work Experience, through to supported internships for some of Sixth Formers. We operate a range of enterprises in the school, including coffee mornings, hanging baskets sales and arts and crafts. Pupils take on increasing levels of leadership as they progress through the school and as appropriate, will reflect on their own performance and areas for development against the Skills Builder Framework. In addition, all post-16 pupils work towards Duke of Edinburgh Awards and complete a volunteering section as part of that scheme.

What's next

Going forwards, we hope to further develop and refine our system for tracking progress towards essential skills within school. Another key priority is to review our current home learning offer and empower parents/carers as they support their children to further practise skills at home. We will be basing our work on the Homezone website, with further differentiation to better suit the needs of our learners. This is an SLT-led initiative, and we’ll be seeking input from all stakeholders to develop a bespoke package of challenges and activities explicitly linked to Skills Builder. The aim is to extend that common vocabulary of essential skills into the homes of all our children, so that they are recognised, named and celebrated!

South East England

United Kingdom