Sandhill View Academy is an 11-16 Academy located in the city of Sunderland. It is part of the Southmoor Multi Academy Trust and has a partner school in the Trust, Southmoor Academy, which has also taken part in the Accelerator programme this year. Sandhill View wanted to get involved in the Accelerator programme in order to be supported to implement essential skills into all areas of the curriculum and school life. The Accelerator programme gave the school the opportunity to benefit from additional staff training, support to develop a strategy and to be able to network and receive further advice and ideas in order to develop our skills strategy further. As a school, we strongly feel that skills are just as important, if not more important, then academic qualifications in preparing our students for when they leave school. We believe that if a student has a good knowledge and understanding of a wide range of skills, then they are ready for future careers and pathways. We have been working towards achieving the Silver Award this year and we will be continuing to embed the essential skills next year.
We feel that the Accelerator programme is just the start of the road in order to develop our students' essential skills. The programme has really highlighted for us that, despite an extensive careers education programme involving many employers, education providers and more, essential skills are at the centre of preparing our students for their futures. We made a decision earlier in the year to really focus on skills as the key basis for our careers programme and being part of the Accelerator programme has just confirmed to us that this was the correct decision to make and we are on the correct path moving forward. A particular highlight has been able to 'celebrate' skills throughout all areas of school. It is fantastic to be able to walk into a classroom when conducting learning walks around school, and be able to hear the skills being used and that students and staff are becoming more confident in the use of skills. Our Careers Weeks have also been a highlight in our careers calendar. Our Maths department focused on 'Problem Solving' and they organised an activity where students had to take on the role of a travel agent and had to solve problems to create a journey. It was great to see students so excited in engaging with the skills.
At Sandhill View Academy, the teaching of essential skills has been embedded into all aspects of teaching and learning. Our starting point this year has been to spend some time ensuring that students, parents and teachers fully understand the meaning of each skill. We wanted to ensure that it was clear at all levels what each skill was about so that the messages became consistent throughout school and between subjects. Students were introduced to the essential skills through their tutor time, where we had a weekly focus on each skill area. This was then supported with further work in SMSC (PSHE) lessons where students were able to record how they have achieved each skill. We encouraged teachers to use the skills icons in their resources used in lessons, we added skills posters to the front of each classroom, and we created a page on our website so that parents and employers could see our emphasis on these skills.
As well as using every opportunity to practise skills in the curriculum, we are also very committed to building skills into every area of school life. Careers Weeks, Home Learning Challenges and much more provide opportunities for practising the skills outside of the classroom. We are also looking to build the skills into the extra-curricular programme from next year, so that students can understand the skills how the skills can be practised in different contexts. We are also looking to ensure that all other opportunities in school, such as visits out, also link to the key skills.
Moving forward, now that the language of the skills has been embedded into school life, our next challenge is to really focus on the 'measure it' principle. We want to ensure that students are very clear in terms of which step that they are on and that staff are also confident to say which step students are on. We are going to ask subject areas to focus on 3 particular skills each so that they are not overwhelmed, and more than likely in the first half term, to focus on one of these 3 skills. We are going to look to build the age-appropriate steps into the lesson objectives at the start of the lesson.
