The Skills Builder Award has proved an invaluable external framework for Newcastle College in supporting the planning, development and implementation of essential skills as part of the college's curriculum footprint over two academic years since 2019. The college used the initial 8 essential skills to benchmark and create its own set of Knowledge, Skills and behaviours (KSB) appropriate to the development needs of our students. Our aim is to signpost these skills at every opportunity for students to see the relevance and context when working through activities and experiencing meaningful engagements with a range of key stakeholders as part of their course. This intention was to ensure that our students are fully aware of the importance of developing new skills, personal characteristics and behaviour traits associated with their intended career destinations. The sequential structure of the 5-guiding principles easily aligns to our own academic structure and operational calendar.

Using the Accelerator Programme and embedding the 8 essential skills against our own skills framework has allowed the college to self-assess itself on what it delivers and identify where improvements still needs to be made. This has not been without its challenges over the last academic year where students have been taught remotely. The impact on this has been a reliance of student independent learning and subsequently this has led to the wider understanding of why essential skills is important.

Our aim next academic year is to ensure essential skills are at the heart of developing quality improvement plans linking to our intent strategy across Newcastle College and wider college group. Operationally this will impact on the updating of our cross college Careers Advice and Guidance Framework and development of skills delivery as part of our rollout of T-Levels. Key milestones will be identified over the year to review and reflect on progress using student and employer voice as feedback.