Located in Solihull, Windy Arbor Primary School have been working with Skills Builder since 2017 to ensure the development of essential skills is central to their curriculum offer. Focused on ensuring children from the early years to year 6 have multiple opportunities to work creatively and collaboratively as they learn and develop transferable essential skills. This year, children will take part in lesson time projects and a whole school challenge day. There will also be opportunities to visit local workplaces to bring their learning to life.

Founded in 1972 in Swindon, Lovell is a leading construction company building affordable homes in the UK. The company employs 1400 staff across 6 UK regions.

From the moment they arrived, students were putting their essential skills into action. First of all by gathering as much information as they could about their hosts and the volunteers who were joining them for the day, and then further as they explored the workplace through a tour. Then, in teams, the students were set their Problem Solving challenge: to design a new tower that the local community would be proud of. They set about designing a tower with apartments and extra special features to improve the lives of the residents. Their designs were inspired by different shapes and they built a scale model of their proposed idea. The day ended with a chance to share their achievements with a panel of volunteers. They reflected on how they had applied Problem Solving throughout the challenge and looked ahead to how they could apply this skill again in the future.