We're bringing educators, employer and impact organisations together to support everyone to build the essential skills for success.
The Skills Builder Universal Framework provides the national standard for teaching essential skills. It breaks each skill into steps, supporting progress for students of all ages and abilities - including those with special educational needs.
Refined over a decade, the Skills Builder Principles underpin a rigorous approach to building essential skills and will form the basis of your strategy. Your success embedding these Principles will be recognised with a Skills Builder Award.
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Windy Arbor has fully embraced the Skills Builder approach, embedding skills education from Nursery to Year 6. They're making further plans enhance their provision over the coming years.
To raise awareness, displays feature across the school. Children take ownership of the displays and use them to track progress. Early Years have trialled using stickers to celebrate skill use. There is a focus skill every fortnight, also displayed.
The school has embedded skills education from Nursery to Year 6. They also have an Autism Resource Centre, which works with essential skills. Younger students are introduced to the language and learning is scaffolded through modelling and practise.
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Students get involved with rich project-based learning, all framed by essential skills. A recent project involved designing a library on a bus! Students were encouraged to use Creativity skills at their step level to create their ‘Dream Space’.
William Tyndale Primary School has been working with us since 2013 to pioneer a deeply integrated, long-term approach to essential skills education. Six years later, it’s the platform for all parts of the curriculum.
It’s crucial to start young, so the school has structured a whole-school programme so that all students - from Nursery to Year 6 - develop the eight skills explicitly and measure progress year on year. This means that all students can articulate their strengths and focus tightly on what they need to learn.
The school has built the approach into various aspects of school life, making sure students see the relevance of essential skills across the curriculum. For example, the skills are incorporated into debating and oracy, and are referenced regularly in assemblies.
The programme includes a range of experiences to bring skills to life, including Challenge Days, Trips to Employers and Projects. The school has even created its own classroom projects and developed connections with local employers as a way to further build and contextualise essential skills.
