Tanfield School has a high proportion of learners (36%) that are disadvantaged. Our local labour market information indicates that our communities have higher than local and national levels of unemployment and deprivation. The personal development of our pupils is therefore essential for their social mobility, economic, physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. Our SLT sees this as being equally as important as their academic successes. Our mission is to get students to attend the best university, or real alternative, succeed in their dream job and thrive in all aspects of their life. We see their personal development as being key to this aim and are developing structures, curricula and opportunities to support them all to be the best version of themselves. Prior to this programme, only 36% of the Y7-10 cohort attended an extracurricular activity and student voice told us that they could not connect their experiences in school with their value beyond examinations (i.e. wellbeing, employability skills, aspirations. social mobility). Students at risk of Not being in Education, Employment or Training were choosing not to attend the activities. We recognised we needed to do things differently and better and Skills Builder aligned with our change in direction. We changed our school curriculum and timetabled co-curricular for Y7-10. In each year, there are three 13 week co-curricular cycles: physical, skills and volunteering (along with a residential experience), following the Duke of Edinburgh model. Skills Builder helped us to plan these sessions so that they are purposeful, meaningful and relevant with explicit communication about the skills. Without these essential skills, the knowledge that we are imparting across the rest of our curricula would potentially not achieve our mission. To fully equip our young people for social mobility and the happy future they deserve, we need to build their skills as well as their knowledge.
Our community loves co-curricular and Skills Builder has been an essential part of its success. It has allowed us to have a meaningful, consistent approach to teaching employability skills and to create a culture whereby we celebrate each and every young person's unique strengths.
As well as being explicitly taught in co-curricular lessons, the skills are referred to in teaching across the whole curriculum. Every Friday morning, the whole school has a British Values morning meeting where skills are explicitly taught too. Likewise, we have three Careers Weeks per academic year and all lessons are connected to the skills. Indeed, external visitors to the school also connect careers presentations to the Skills Builder Framework, referring to them and using the icons, consolidating key messages that students hear throughout the year.
We'd love to achieve the Gold Award, being tantalisingly close this year! We will monitor the reference to skills in learning walks, to ensure lessons support what we can see when quality assure resources.
