Aimed at young people aged 11 to 15, Creative Briefs is an 8-week classroom-based programme designed to stimulate real-world thinking. With a range of resources and interactive sessions led by a mix of artists, cultural professionals and organisations across 12 creative industries, participants will gain essential skills through immersing themselves in a creative practice.
Each Creative Brief focuses on 3 essential skills: Aiming High and two others which are unique to that discipline's project. Students have the opportunity to practise and reflect on the skills they use throughout the project. Teachers are able to evaluate progress in the three focus skills throughout the project, supported by the Skills Builder Hub.
The Briefs and accompanying sessions are designed to be delivered remotely or in person, with the schools’ involvement being supported by Babylon ARTS.
The Essential Skills Academy is a series of ten workshops aimed at supporting groups of individuals to reflect on and develop their essential skills in the workplace. It provides in-depth insight into the eight essential skills and space for individuals to identify their existing strengths and areas for development. Participants complete a number of online self-assessments across the workshop series using Skills Builder Benchmark; the results of which are used to set and review skill targets which they focus on throughout their placement or in the workplace. The Universal Framework is embedded throughout the programme and Skills Builder Launchpad is an important tool used to help individuals build their knowledge in the skills alongside the workshops.
The overall aim is to support individuals to identify, demonstrate and articulate their skill set, ultimately making meaningful progress in the essential skills over the course of the Academy.
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Plan Bright Work Experience provides a unique cross-industry opportunity to join one of the world's largest Human Resources providers.
Plan Bright forms part of the Adecco Group's Creating Brighter Futures programme. As a global employer, the Adecco Group strives to work hand in hand to give young people access to information, advice and opportunities.
Students will practise and progress in the essential skills while taking on real work projects which address future global trends in employment.
Students will leave the programme with tangible examples of their skills and experiences of work, as well as a greater insight into a range of careers.
Its modular design allows flexibility to suit schools looking for work experience over a few days or up to two weeks.
To find out more about how your school or college can be involved, contact communityteam@adecco.com
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Digital Membership is a Skills Builder programme for schools and colleges which includes impact measurement and teaching tools for the eight essential skills. Through Digital Membership schools and colleges can embed a comprehensive approach to skills development across their setting and access premium resources.
Every Digital Membership includes:
In addition to everything above schools and colleges can choose resources for:
On Skills Builder Benchmark, learners can benchmark their own skills against the Skills Builder framework and download personalised skill reports. Staff can add and manage groups, set assessment periods and download data reports to support learners to build their essential skills.
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The Global Accelerator is our flagship programme for schools and colleges across the world. Our team of expert teachers work with your school or college to embed best practices to build essential skills. This includes supporting a Skills Leader, training teachers, and providing access to top quality teaching and assessment materials, as well as a network.
Skills Builder Hub is an assessment & resource platform for building students' essential skills.
Skills Builder Launchpad is an online resource platform for individuals aged 14+ to build their own essential skills. The platform can support with specific development needs or guide individuals through a choice of courses based on the essential skills. Each course contains interactive modules to build every step of the Universal Framework. Each module is structured in 3 simple steps: identifying key concepts, practising the skill step and articulating understanding and application of the skill step through independent reflection, written reflection or discussion with a peer or mentor.
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The Skills Builder Accelerator is our flagship programme for UK schools and colleges. Our team of expert teachers work with your school or college to embed best practices to build essential skills. This includes supporting a Skills Leader, training your teachers, and providing access to top quality teaching and assessment materials, as well as a network.
Allen & Overy launched the Smart Start Experience in 2009 with the aim of giving young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds access to high-quality work experience in the world of business.
Since its launch, the Smart Start Experience has supported over 1,569 young people. As the recipient of many prestigious awards, the Smart Start Experience was the first work experience scheme in the legal sector to have its programme Assured by City & Guilds.
Through a timetable of interactive workshops and team challenges, Smart Start allows young people to develop the skills necessary to succeed in education and the world of work. They develop knowledge of the main City job sectors, potential career opportunities and the importance of commercial awareness. They learn how to apply the eight Skills Builder essential skills: Listening, Speaking, Problem Solving, Creativity, Staying Positive, Aiming High, Leadership and Teamwork.
Students will have the opportunity to practise these essential skills at the Getting started, Intermediate and Advanced Stages of the Skills Builder Universal Framework, and assess progress at the end of the week.
A few reflections from Smart Start's 2021 participants:
Allen & Overy has developed Smart Start over the years to include an e-mentoring programme, and on-going support through university, and they provide scholarships to some students to help with the costs of university.
In 2021 Allen & Overy partnered with Causeway Education to adapt the Smart Start Experience for online delivery. To find out more contact sue.wisbey@allenovery.com or smartstart@causeway.education
Street League is the UK’s leading sport for employment charity. We support young people who live in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the UK to learn the skills they need to overcome their practical and personal barriers and become economically active. Sport is at the heart of what we do and what makes us successful. We support young people holistically, recognising the inextricable links between wellbeing, health and employment.
We use the power of sport to help young people, aged 14 to 30, who face personal barriers to employment to improve their wellbeing, secure employment and have a brighter future. We work in schools, communities, and with employers to equip young people with the confidence, motivation, essential skills and qualifications needed to succeed in the world of work.
Our sports and employability academies for unemployed young people, is an exciting step in our journey to preventing – as well as ‘treating’ – youth unemployment and in-work poverty. Our programmes develop the life and workplace skills, self-worth and sense of belonging young people need to thrive and move into high quality employment, education or training.
Topical Talk is a school current affairs discussion programme, giving young people the skills to think and speak for themselves about current affairs. 9-14-year-olds learn to listen, be creative, solve problems and speak effectively about real-world matters, from inequality to climate change.
It provides training and news-based teaching resources, allowing teachers to facilitate inspiring current-affairs discussions in the classroom. It also provides an online platform for pupils, where they can join topical discussions with peers all over the world and leading topic experts.
Created in collaboration with the Harlequins Foundation and a team of sports experts, the Coaching Handbook is a comprehensive guide to delivering skills-based sports activities in your existing programmes.
Choose a skill step and follow the two-page guide for teaching it, practising it, reinforcing it and assessing it.
The Coaching Handbook gathers best practice from a range of sports experts and is a brilliant starting point for targeted skills practice in physical activity settings.
The assessment section and reflection questions allow learners to reflect on their progress through guided questioning, coach observation and discussion.
To quantify learners' progress and impact digitally, the Coaching Handbook can be complemented by the Skills Builder Hub for group assessment or Skills Builder Benchmark for individual self assessment online.
Envision is a U.K. based charity that exists to build confidence and develop employability skills in young people, using social action as a vehicle to get them engaged in issues that affect their local community.
We work with schools with non-selective state schools in Birmingham, Bristol, and London to support underrepresented young people develop essential skills to access education, employment, and training.
We do this through our structured active citizenship programmes, that are designed to develop teamwork, communication, creativity, and determination in Key Stage 4 and 5 pupils, and build their self-efficacy and social confidence.
Digital Innovators is an award-winning training provider specialising in giving young people and those not currently in education, employment or training, access career opportunities by providing them with the confidence, self-belief, leadership and digital skills to help them stand out.
Digital Innovators offer an innovative and fresh approach to employability training working in collaboration with local businesses. Through their Skills Programme and unique take on traditional work experience, graduates have gone on to unlock their potential and find meaningful employment. Working with Solihull College & University Centre, GBSLEP and the West Midlands Combined Authority, the programme offers free digital transformation, business improvement and innovation projects to local employers as a training vehicle for students.
Digital Skills is an innovative suite of bite-sized learning that develops digital confidence and knowledge in those looking to enhance their employability or build a business. The nine courses are offered online through a leading open course provider, FutureLearn, and include our introductory courses:
The courses help learners to make sense of the ever-evolving world of digital, from understanding the basics to more advanced concepts and how to apply these. Each course is enhanced by online social collaboration and is led by an Accenture expert. They are easily accessible, CPD-certified, free of charge and mobile-enabled.
Throughout the programme, there is a focus on gaining essential transferable skills, aligned to the Skills Builder Universal Framework, to ensure that learners will be confident and successful in their future endeavours. Specific focus steps from the Skills Builder Universal Framework are referenced within the online content and within the module Activity Pack.
The courses were designed to encourage an interactive and engaging experience through social collaboration and peer-to-peer learning where learners can practise and reflect on content covered throughout through activities, quizzes and discussion questions. Learners have the opportunity to support their learning on the course by using Skills Builder Benchmark to assess their essential skills. The learning is supported by Accenture digital mentors, who post questions and useful resources to enhance the learning experience.
To access the training, click on the course links and register for an account.
The Eco Refill shop allows a team of children to set up and operate an Eco Refill Shop within their school to actively reduce plastic waste. The team of children will work through enterprise training modules to create a business plan, apply for specific job roles, and go on to operate their business throughout a school year, which deepens their understanding and skills development.
Essential skills through hobbies is a student internship programme where students (age 13- 18 years) join us to learn skills, practise and apply them. We integrate essential skills in hobbies so that learners have opportunities to develop them through their hobbies which they have a natural inclination towards and apply them to solve problems around them. This programme is designed to expose students to hobbies like photography, doodle art, videography and blogging. Children and youth who are engaged in the program create, experiment, question, conduct research and self evaluate their work. The program’s curriculum is problem-centred: the problem statements for each week have a progression and are aligned to the UNSDGs. Along with the problem, students are introduced to one step of the skill each week. They work on building a solution to the problem given using the steps of the skill learnt each week and represent them through their hobby. As there is a progression in the steps, each week students apply the previous week’s step learnt. Once the student submits his/her artefact (solutions), they self evaluate to reflect upon their approaches and improvise. Detailed feedback by the team is also shared. The week is designed to follow the Teach-Practise-Reinforce-Assess flow.
Get Creative with Data is a pioneering KS3 computing syllabus which uses hands-on activities and project based learning to introduce young people to data science. The syllabus covers a range of engaging topics- machine learning and AI, practical data science skills, STEM careers and many more- as well as supporting pupils to build essential skills for successful futures.
The Healthy Tuck Shop initiative supports the formation of healthy eating habits through a child-led healthy tuck shop business.
Children work through enterprise training modules to create a business plan, apply for job roles, and go on to operate their business throughout the school year which deepens their understanding and skills development.
The products sold are all within government guidelines and don't contain nuts, seeds or gelatine.
Are you looking to bring the world of work to life in the classroom?
The Lloyds Skills Experience is a 1-hour interactive workshop focused on practising Listening, Creativity and Speaking skills.
Pupils have the chance to meet and interview Lloyds Banking Group volunteers based in their region, explore a range of careers, design their own Lloyds workspace to promote Creativity skills and deliver a persuasive pitch.
This careers insight opportunity is designed for pupils in Years 5, 6, 7 and 8, supporting skills development during the key transition stage from primary into secondary school.
To find out more about how your school can be involved, contact: skillsbuilder@lloydsbanking.com
Ark is an education charity that exists to make sure all children, regardless of their background, have access to a great education and real choices in life. There are 38 Ark schools across the UK including 13 who have Sixth Forms.
Professional Pathways is a sixth form programme offered exclusively at Ark Schools. Professional Pathways students complete a Level 3 BTEC qualification (equivalent to A levels). The course also includes a bespoke wrap around curriculum to ensure students develop the skills they need to succeed at school, at university or in an apprenticeship and throughout their careers. This support includes weekly lessons and twice yearly events. The curriculum is aligned to the Skills Builder framework.
Evaluation of the programme shows that Professional Pathways students rate their skills more highly than their peers. A full report into the Professional Pathways programme will be made available soon.
Skill Solutions is a careers insight day for secondary schools, designed in partnership with Skill Builder and run by volunteers from the Adecco Group.
Pupils will take on the role of Recruitment Consultants, practising their Teamwork, Problem Solving and Listening skills.
Volunteers will also share their experience of how the essential skills are used in the workplace, bringing a broad range of careers to life.
Skill Solutions forms part of the Think Bright outreach programme. To find out more about how your school can be involved, contact communityteam@adecco.com
The Skills to Succeed Academy is a free-to-access, online learning platform which offers 11 courses full of bite-sized modules designed to help students and jobseekers develop the dynamic mix of skills needed to navigate the journey of choosing or changing their career, finding a job and being successful in the workplace. With interactive and engaging modules, learners can build their skills and confidence empowering them to take ownership of their journey, whether they are looking to reskill, change careers, or apply for their first job. Through interactive quizzes, multiple choice and drag-and-drop activities learners can test their knowledge of a particular topic, technical skill or essential skills. Simulation modules of real-life scenarios such as an interview provide a chance for learners to explore and practise skills which can often be difficult to teach - such as body language and making first impressions, in a safe learning environment. Activity packs and quiz feedback enable learners to reflect on their learning and practise their essential skills further.
Specific Universal Framework step outcomes can be found in the Individual Module Guide, to help identify appropriate content for your learners' essential skills goals.
If you’re a staff member and would like to access the training, support and marketing materials, please visit www.s2sacademy.com and register using the following Access Code: SBP123STAF. Please note that this code is for educators only - learners can use the code: SBP123.
Teaching and Assessing Core Skills is a free online course which supports teachers and school leaders to develop their ability to teach core skills and learn how to measure their students' core skills development.
Employers are demanding higher-order cognitive skills from their workforces, so it’s crucial that young people have access to education that supports the development of core skills to help them succeed.
This course will guide you through how to capture student achievement and plan progression in core skills. You’ll work through examples of how this can be carried out in the classroom with opportunities to practise these new techniques in your own context.
You’ll learn about the Skills Builder approach and how the Skills Builder Framework supports you to target and understand students’ progress over time. You’ll also build an action plan to support the progression of core skills in your school, with the opportunity to share, review, and refine this project with other participants on the course and with support from experienced course educators.
Click here to enrol.
SMBP works with Year 12 students from low income backgrounds from across the UK, enabling access to work insight with multiple employers, resilience training and lifetime career mentoring.
Students attend a Work Insight and Skills week as part of a SMBP facilitated cluster, spending a day at four different businesses and a fifth day at a professional sports club where they learn about the psychology of resilience and goal achievement models. They will engage in business like tasks and scenarios, gain a wider understanding of the business and information about career entry programmes and their recruitment processes. This is also a fantastic opportunity for students to network with professionals and colleagues from each business.
SMBP support students and their families by ensuring that any travel costs are arranged in advance or reimbursed and our partners provide a light lunch and refreshments on the day.
We work with our business partners to inform SMBP Alumni of any upcoming career entry opportunities, internships or work experience opportunities.
Click this link to hear what some of our 2020 students had to say about their week.
Please email us at info@smbp.org.uk for more information or click on our website link below.
Green Schools Project is an educational environmental organisation, whose vision is to ensure that every school in the UK is a model of sustainability, developing young people that live in an environmentally responsible way and help to drive the transition to a sustainable society. They enable young people to fulfil their potential through providing resources and support to schools and encouraging them to engage in environmental projects, building students' skills and aspirations whilst empowering them to tackle the climate and ecological crises.
The Zero Carbon Schools Programme supports pupils and teachers to calculate their school's carbon emissions and take their first steps towards becoming a zero carbon school. This programme also develops participating pupils' knowledge of climate change and develops key skills, such as Leadership and Teamwork whilst also supporting teachers in implementing whole-school actions to bring climate and nature into their lessons. Schools will be able to promote the work they are doing - encouraging more to follow and establishing them as leaders in efforts to tackle climate change.
The fully-funded remote version of the Zero Carbon Schools Programme will be offered to schools from September 2021. Find out more at www.greenschoolsproject.org.uk or contact info@greenschoolsproject.org.uk
As the UK’s largest Education Business Partnership, The Changing Education group delivers the best-in-class work experience and careers management services to provide purposeful, planned, and safe work experiences and careers programmes for students. Their work placement and careers management platform CONNECT, supports schools with their:
The platform supports careers advisors, wider careers, and work-based learning teams to set targets for their students prior to commencing placement. The package includes a student diary and logbook, the ability for students to log hours, and employers to feed into appraisals. Skills Builder's Universal Framework is integrated into the CONNECT web platform and mobile app and supports all students to take ownership of their essential skill development and articulate their strengths. It can link specific learner activities to the essential skills and track their progress in essential skills over the placement.
Check out the CONNECT explainer video here or visit their company website below.
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Children’s University is a charity that works in partnership with schools to develop a love of learning in children. We do this by encouraging and celebrating participation in extra-curricular activities in and outside of school. The impact of this is proven to be positive and we are committed to creating a level playing field and opening up access to all children. We have a new digital platform that provides actionable data to understand what type of learning is being done and allows for the categorisation of the learning opportunities and skills developed.
Earwig provides an app to enable teachers to quickly and easily capture moments of achievement in the classroom and turn these into useful and vivid timelines for any teacher, class, subject or pupil. These effortlessly record and illustrate progress and make sure that the school always has all its teaching evidence ready at any given moment. Pupils can also add their own evidence to their timelines.
These timelines can be shared with parents and Ofsted love the improved parental engagement that results.
The Earwig Assessment Suite enables teachers to tie evidence directly to their assessment decisions and keep this all in the same software package, no matter how many different curricula or assessment frameworks they use. So they need only employ one package across the school, from Primary to Adult. This makes analytics and reporting easier, faster and more professional.
The Skills Builder framework is built into Earwig, along with 300 other frameworks in the Earwig Library at https://earwig.uk.com/frameworks/finder.
Earwig has won numerous awards, has been recognised by the Department for Education and Ofsted and was deemed a “game changer” by The Sunday Times.
Grofar is the award-winning Careers Management and Work Placement Solution for schools and colleges.
Grofar Careers provides Careers Leaders with a comprehensive suite of tools which supports them make better use of their limited time, reduce the administrative burden of careers management and facilitate the delivery of high-quality careers guidance. Students are provided with a digital careers passport which allows them to access resources, create action plans, log careers activity and track essential skills developed.
The Grofar Work Placement Management solution supports schools and colleges to realise the full potential of their Work Experience, Industry Placement or T-Level programme. With Grofar, work experience coordinators can control, manage and report on placements, while also providing their students with a 21st century digital application that allows them to quickly and easily enter their hours and experiences whilst out on placements and reflect on the essential skills they are developing.
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Morrisby Careers and Tracker combine to be a whole school careers management platform for ages 11+
Morrisby Tracker has been developed to help schools record and evidence their wider provision, which is so important to student development. These can be careers related activities, but equally can be used to record extracurricular or enrichment activities. Activities are created using an easy-to-use wizard and the system comes with a library of ready-made careers lessons.
Students can log their own activities, include skills they have acquired, while including evidence which can be easily audited by teachers. This is combined with other activity and the action plan to create the Learner passport - a comprehensive record of skills.
An ‘activity’ can be categorised against multiple Gatsby Benchmark and SkillsBuilder steps. It can also include additional resources such as lesson plans, worksheets, class presentations and Morrisby ‘Forms’. This gives structure to plan out your lesson or activity, as well as make it richer and more engaging for students
For each activity you can decide if you want to capture feedback. This is done via a feedback form, sent by both alert and email, and is the ideal way to evidence the quality of your provision, as well as informing continuous improvement and capturing ‘student voice’.
Say It With Your Chest is a not-for-profit with a vision to create a world where young people are supported to thrive, realise their potential and build a better future for themselves. They have three aims that are at the core of the organisation:
Say It With Your Chest's Personal development workshops are for young people in the UK aged 11 – 25. All workshops can be delivered online or in person and young people receive the support to develop their soft skills.
Skills Builder Benchmark is an online essential skills self-reflection tool for anyone aged 14 or more.
Start is a digital careers platform with the information, advice and tools to help students to explore and plan for their future.
We have added the Skills Builder framework into Start to help direct students to the most relevant Skills Builder content and for them to capture their progress against the steps in each of the skills within the framework.
Unifrog's mission is to level the playing field when it comes to students finding and applying successfully for the best opportunities for them. They want to revolutionise CEIAG so that every student - regardless of background - finds their best next step.
Unifrog brings all the available information into a single, impartial, user-friendly platform to help students make the best choices, and submit the strongest applications. Students explore pathways, find their future and build their profile by evidencing their essential skills and experiences. They also empower teachers to manage the progression process effectively to make sure Unifrog has a genuine impact in each of the 2,500 schools they work with.
Unifrog’s Competencies tool supports students to reflect against the Skills Builder Universal Framework. It structures accurate reflection against individual steps of the framework and supports learners to write articulate responses through scaffolded questions and example responses.
Aspire Higher is a consortium of the Uni Connect Project funded by the Office for Students. Our objective is to offer impartial support to secondary school students (Years 9-13), from areas defined by postcode, in making better informed decisions about their next steps into higher education whatever that may be - college, apprenticeship or university.
Our Sports Project is just one example of an outreach programme. Throughout the project, students learn about different case studies from those who have studied sports based courses, consider nutrition and look into physiology. Throughout the Project, we have embedded the Skills Builder essential skills at various points to add allow students the opportunity to understand and develop these skills whilst adding value to our project overall.
