Skills Builder was introduced at beginning of term and has been used in every lesson alongside 'Barclays Life Skills'. Parental involvement has been used to support certain skills when the homework has been set. Assemblies have been run to introduce the 8 skills and to teach students what they mean in real life situations and moving forward, rather than a pure focus on sixth form education. Work experience was a key part of the skills course and students were asked to self-reflect and assess their own performance when they returned, this was then reviewed against the feedback from the businesses on individual performance for the week.

Benchmark has been essential in analysing the data when students have completed the assessments either in class or as a homework exercise. The students logged in at the first session and watched videos and worked independently in some sessions, whilst all coming together for others. It was really useful to establish some clear differences in skill levels and to get students working together to support each other. Having access to visual customisable teacher charts was advantageous, particularly in the cohort I was teaching rather than more reports. It allowed us to show the class where we were and how they were progressing, which then allowed us to have individual conversations. Being able to see immediately whether students have loaded work and examples with the green/red was useful when time is limited to review accessibility to a course.

We used the translation tool available for the Universal Framework to have interactions with parents so there was a full understanding across the cohort of the skills and the steps. The Hub gave access to short lessons which we could then expand with other resources. Launchpad was introduced very early so students could create their accounts and use it in lessons to work on progressing through the skills steps. It was important that the steps were fully explained as students were unsure at first about what 'Basic' was and how to get to 'Mastery'! I printed off the workbooks for students at end of each term to take home and complete.

Students were given a community led project, to use three skills, Creativity, Teamwork and Problem Solving, which as a group they decided to lead on. They designed, implemented and carried out community work which involved parent/carers and school. It was wonderful to see them come together and utilise each others strengths to achieve their goal and awards were given. An end of term celebration with awards and recognition was a great way to end the project. All students achieved different awards and were individual recognised.

Work experience is key in this course, with a lot of preparation prior to going into the workplace, with practise of S&L skills. I also have invited in external speakers to allow students to see how the skills relate to companies, job market and life. Students had local colleges, LLoyds Bank, NHS and Apprenticeship providers coming into talk to them and have Q&A sessions, including talking about essential skills.