Skills Builder Global

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Tshangkha Central School

Context

Tshangkha Central School is located in central Bhutan. It is an all through school from pre primary aged 5 to 18 years old. We also have a childcare Centre for children aged 3-5. We also have a SEND school containing 29 students from mild to severe additional learning needs. Our school is linked to the Royal Academy and we prepare mentees for the Bhutan Baccalaureate and run a well established Mentor and Mentee programme with all our students.

Overall impact

With the knowledge of essential skills gained from the training, we were able to introduce essential skills to our mentees and reflect on their importance. We could discuss goals for Speaking and Listening with each mentee and use activities to build their confidence in these areas.

Keep it simple

We attended the group training sessions led by the Skills Builder team, this helped to build our knowledge and understanding of essential skills and the Universal Framework. We then completed training with our mentors to help them understand the skills that they would be building with their mentor groups. To reinforce essential skills our mentors use praise with their mentors and discuss progress with individual mentees.

Start early, keep going

In our first year on the programme we started with mentor groups ranging from pre primary to grade 7, this allowed us to trial the process and make changes on a smaller scale.

Measure it

Each mentee and mentee discuss their goals and progress with their mentor in 1-1 and group sessions.

Focus tightly

Mentor groups are scheduled for 1 hour session every Friday. This is used to reflect on essential skills needed by the group. The first focus was Speaking and Listening Skills We introduced essential skills with a Hub assembly and then held discussions with mentees to set individual goals. Based on this we set skill building activities at both group and individual level.

Keep practising

Each student has an individual roadmap that is uploaded to a central system called the mother board. Our plan is to include a key essential skill goal for each student, this would then allow the mentees to practice their skill goals in other subject areas and reflect on their progress.

Bring it to life

Community projects, for example, on October 6th a festival cycle race will take place giving an opportunity to practice essential skills. The cultural community often presents to students and these examples show students essential skills in real life.

What's next

We will build on our initial plans next year and aim to involve more mentors and mentees. We also need to consider how to link to other subjects and involve wider aspects of the school community.

Bhutan