This research piece was led by Emma Crighton, a member of our Education Team at Skills Builder. The paper channels the voices of teachers and their motivations around building essential skills for their learners. It also explores the barriers teacher face and how Skills Build can address some of these, as well as where wider policy change is needed. Speaking to teachers within and beyond the Skills Builder network, as well as seven leaders in the education sector, the insights gathered include:
This report is built off a new research study conducted with YouGov including more than 3,000 young people aged 16-24 years-old. Individuals completed a self-assessment against the Skills Builder Universal Framework, as well as sharing other outcomes data. Insights generated include:
This report is built off new analysis of the British Cohort Study, creating proxy measures for essential skill levels when individuals were aged 10- and 16-years-old in 1980 and 1986 respectively. The analysis sought to test five hypotheses, by linking together datasets around the British Cohort Study (1970). In doing so, we found that higher levels of self-reported essential skills levels are associated with:
This report was written by the Centre for Education & Youth with the Skills Builder Partnership, and reviewed existing robust academic studies exploring the links between essential skills and wider life outcomes. The report highlighted evidence of three links:
Where studies in this review explored the features of effective delivery, they indicated that essential skills interventions tend to be more effective when regular, long term, explicit, embedded, structured, supported and targeted.
This report brings together analysis of the Skills Builder Framework and how it could be extended to act as a universal framework – equally relevant to individuals at all stages of their education or careers. Developed as part of the Essential Skills Taskforce, the work reviewed the completeness and relevance of the existing Skills Builder approach through four comparative lenses:
The framework was the tested through a series of roundtables with employers, educators, and other individuals to ensure that it was not only rigorous but usable. The final result was the Skills Builder Universal Framework.
This book was written by Skills Builder’s founder, Tom Ravenscroft, reflecting on the lessons learned over the organisation’s first eight years. Drawing on experience and the broad literature around education and skills development, the book explores:
This report, written by LKMco (now the Centre for Education & Youth), reviewed the evidence around enterprise education and the best-practice principles developed by Enabling Enterprise (now Skills Builder Partnership). This evidence review was complemented by a roundtable in January 2017, and five case studies of primary and secondary schools using the approach around the country.
The report highlighted that:
The report highlighted priorities to:
It has certainly not been the year that we originally planned for across the Partnership, but the pandemic has demonstrated our collective determination and resilience.
One of the biggest shifts for us this year has been the launch of the Skills Builder Universal Framework - a collaborative effort over 18 months, developed with the CBI, CIPD, Gatsby Foundation, Business in the Community, Careers & Enterprise Company and the EY Foundation. This has helped to better join up all of our efforts and provide a complete journey for any individual to master their essential skills.
We have seen continued strong growth in impact across all three strands of the Partnership:
This year, we celebrated 10 years since we got started as Enabling Enterprise back in 2009. Over that time, our work has constantly evolved, to where we are today as the Skills Builder Partnership. We made the shift because working together and combining our efforts is by far the best way to ensure that one day, everyone builds the essential skills to succeed.
Across the three strands of the Skills Builder Partnership, the headlines are:
This 2018 Impact Report captures a transformational year for Enabling Enterprise. In our ninth year, we have worked with more students than ever before – with 95,938 students completing one of our programmes this year. It’s great to see that even as our work continues to grow, we have been able to maintain the impact of our programmes at scale.
This year has seen a big shift in broadening our work beyond our existing partnership of 335 schools and 130 employer partners. In October 2017, The Missing Piece: The Essential Skills that Education Forgot was published by John Catt Publishing, drawing together the evidence base and what we’d learnt in ensuring that every child and young person builds the essential skills to thrive.
Then, in May 2018, we launched the Skills Builder Framework and the Partnership behind it. The Framework is the culmination of more than four years work and takes the eight essential skills and turns breaks them down into teachable, measurable chunks. The process of refinement benefited from the expertise of more than sixty individuals and piloting in twenty organisations. As we enter our tenth year, the organisation goes from strength to strength: we are seeing a surge of interest and excitement from schools across the country in building the essential skills of their students, and the Partnership is growing by the day.
It’s a huge pleasure to be able to share our Impact Report for 2017. The last year has seen our partnership take a meaningful step forward towards achieving our mission.
Our programmes have continued to grow quickly, with over 87,000 students across the country taking part in an Enabling Enterprise programme in the last year. That is almost double the number just two years ago.
This year we passed a milestone, with over 250,000 student programmes now completed over the seven years of Enabling Enterprise.
During our final education webinar of the academic year, we launched our latest piece of research – Essential skills: Teachers’ perspectives on opportunities and barriers. This research channels the voice of teachers and their motivations around building essential skills for their learners. It also explores the barriers teacher face and how Skills Build can address some of these, as well as where wider policy change is needed. Emma Crighton from our Education team and the author of the paper shared the key findings of the report during the session before Tom Ravenscroft, our CEO, facilitated a fireside chat with a panel of guest speakers:
Watch the recording of the webinar to hear the insight we gathered from the research and the reflections from our fantastic panel who joined us for the event.
In June, our education webinar focused on how Skills Builder schools and colleges are embedding essential skills beyond the classroom through their work with parents and carers and Skills Builder platforms such as the Home Learning Hub and Skills Builder Benchmark. We heard from two members of the Skills Builder team who talked us through how these platforms were designed and how they can support teachers, individuals and parents and carers. This was contextualised by Zoe Armitage at Stanborough School and Colin Galley at New College Durham who shared how they develop essential skills beyond the classroom and the impact this has had for their pupils.
In March, schools and colleges on a Skills Builder programme were invited to attend our third Education Webinar: Creating Sustainable Change.
The webinar began with an introduction from Skills Builder’s Emma Crighton who talked about how we recognise good practice in our schools and colleges through the Skills Builder Award. Emma outlines how the award was developed and how it is supporting our schools and colleges to embed long-term, sustainable essential skill development. You can download the award guide mentioned in the webinar at skillsbuilder.org/awardguide
During the webinar, we talked to four of our schools and colleges about where they were in their Skills Builder journey, how they used the programme in their setting and their plans for 2021-22. Watch the recording of the webinar to hear from our Skills Leaders, find out more about the award process and discover some new ideas and top tips for how to develop a long-term essential skills programme in your setting.
On January 28th we ran our second Skills Builder Education Webinar for teachers and leaders signed up to a Skills Builder programme. This webinar explored how to teach the essential skills to learners with additional needs both in mainstream and specialist settings.
During the 45 minute webinar we heard from three fantastic speakers from schools and colleges who were embedding the Skills Builder approach for learners with additional needs. We also heard from the National Literacy Trust whose resources give all pupils the opportunity to apply the essential skills. This was followed by a Q&A and an update from Tom Varley, our SEND lead at Skills Builder who talked about some key resources and next steps.
If you work with learners with additional needs, are interested in developing an inclusive approach to skills teaching or are just interested in hearing some fantastic success stories from across the partnership, this webinar is for you.
On 9th June our Director of Development Rosa Morgan-Baker hosted our first webinar based around the Skills Builder Framework, with a spotlight on Staying Positive. This essential skill is needed across contexts - all through education and on into employment and beyond. Watch the whole webinar, featuring an interview with our Founder & CEO Tom Ravenscroft.
