Skills Builder Global

This content was written by

Mid Essex Co-Operative Academy

Context

Mid Essex Co-operative Academy is an Alternative Provision setting in Maldon, Essex serving young people aged 5-16 who have experienced or are at risk of permanent exclusion from mainstream school, as well as those young people who have emotionally based school avoidance. In order to build resilience and independence in our pupils and to prepare them effectively for the next stage in their learning journey, we focus heavily on transferable skills in all of our curriculum areas. We wanted to use the Skills Builder Accelerator programme this year to formalise this process and enable us to track pupils' progress and use a common language with regards to skills across the school.

Overall impact

Overall, the Skills Builder Accelerator has enabled us to develop a common language around essential skills across our school community. The clarity of the Framework has enabled us to develop a consistent approach so that our pupils can recognise when they are developing essential skills across the school.

Keep it simple

Skills Builder has been launched in assemblies across all secondary year groups and a central Skills Builder display is in place in the main reception area of the school. We have focused explicitly on Skills Builder in employability skills lessons in Years 10 and 11 and through the use of the Operation Moonbase Challenge Day activity in our Key Stage 3 leadership lessons. Pupils' achievement in lessons was celebrated with certificates in our end of year achievement assembly.

Start early, keep going

Through the delivery of Skills Builder in employability skills and leadership lessons we have been able to pilot the programme with small groups of pupils across all secondary year groups. We have shared our focus on skills with parents through our Year 9 options booklet, in which subject leaders explicitly highlighted which of the eight essential skills would addressed in each option subject.

Measure it

With the small group of pilot pupils, we have made use of the Skills Builder Hub to measure their progress through the eight essential skills. Teachers are encouraged to measure progress at the beginning of a series of lessons and again at the end.

Focus tightly

The Skills Builder Framework has underpinned the work we have done particularly in our Key Stage 3 leadership lessons. These pupils are increasingly familiar with the Framework itself and the eight essential skills and are continuing to develop confidence in assessing their own levels of proficiency within each skill area. The use of the Operation Moonbase Challenge Day activity and resources has ensured that these lessons are explicitly linked to the Skills Builder Framework.

Keep practising

As a small school, a significant number of our teaching staff deliver more than one subject. One of our KS3 leadership teachers who has worked with pupils on our Skills Builder pilot is also an English teacher and has made some explicit references to the Framework in her English lessons. Where she teaches the same pupils for leadership and English, they have been encouraged to identify where the skills they develop in English complement and extend those developed in leadership and vice versa.

Bring it to life

Through developing cross-curricular links at Key Stage 3, pupils are encouraged to see how skills underpin their work in all lessons and how they can be applied in real life situations. This has been a particular focus in Year 10 and 11 employability lessons in which pupils have written CVs, completed job and college application forms and taken part in mock interviews. In each of these cases they have been encouraged to focus on the skills developed through the Skills Builder progamme and how each of these can make them attractive candidates to prospective employers.

What's next

Our next priority will be to take the success of this small scale pilot and continue to extend it across the school, including all pupils and curriculum areas as well as other key stakeholders such as our parents and carers and our referring schools.

East of England

United Kingdom

Special

Mid Essex Co-Operative Academy