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Arden College is a specialist further education college for young people aged 16 to 25 years with complex barriers to learning, including autism, and learning disabilities. The college is part of Aspris children and young peoples services. The college has gone through a transition of change over the last 4 years, a new principal, and a new site. Placements are referred from up to 17 different Local Authorities giving diversity and challenge to securing stakeholder engagement. The learning and support that is provided is tailored to the individual needs, strengths, interests, and aspirations of each young person. Students at Arden College all have an EHCP and are supported to design their own personalised curriculum, with the help of their family and other key people in their lives. Arden College operates over 2 sites. The college is separated into 4 Phases: Phase 1, 2 ,3 and 4, that are of mixed age. We chose the Skills Builder Accelerator programme to aid us in developing our foundation of skills across the curriculum, leading to it giving it a more consistent approach across the college. The programme supported us to complete a strategy for achieving excellence in building learners? essential skills. The Accelerator programme gave us set opportunities and support to upskill staff in the essential skills. It allowed us to have a clear focus that is sustainable that has led to effective long-term planning.
Overall impact
The programme provides structured frameworks and resources that help teachers incorporate essential skills like communication, teamwork and problem-solving into their daily sessions. This has led to more engaging and effective teaching practices. Teachers benefit from professional development opportunities, gaining new strategies to support student learning and development. Teachers feel more confident in their ability to teach essential skills, which are often challenging to integrate into traditional academic subjects. Students acquire crucial life and employability skills, which are explicitly taught and practiced. This preparation is valuable for their future careers and personal growth. Through the implementation of Skills Builder, we have seen improvements in student engagement, motivation, and academic performance as a result of the emphasis on these broader skills. The programme helps create a future workforce equipped with the skills needed by employers, thereby contributing to economic growth and development, stronger community ties and mutual support. Students with well-rounded skills are better prepared to engage in community and civic activities, contributing positively to society.
Keep it simple
The college planned an event to officially launch Skills Builder to the students. The event included promotional items such as logo cakes and pens for students to take away with them. Students were briefed on the college's commitment to nurturing the 8 essential skills, crucial for post-college success, encouraging them to integrate this language into their daily educational journey. The launch encompassed phases 2, 3, and 4. The college has set up numerous displays across the campus to provide detailed explanations about Skills Builder to the students, including a specific Dungeons & Dragons display. The college has identified specific "skills-based" sessions within Skills Builder to track and assess students' skill acquisition during existing activities such as Work Experience (WEX), Dungeons 'n' Dragons, and Duke of Edinburgh. Skills are embedded and taught to students in relation to wider college values; community, resilience, communication, independence and health.
Start early, keep going
85% of phase 4 students access an external provider for work experience, whilst 70% of phase 3 and 70% of phase 2 students undertake internal or external work skills placements. 70% of phase 3, 70% of Phase 2 and 35% of phase 4 students partake in Duke of Edinburgh. All of these opportunities are provided on at least a once a week basis. College provides termly updates to parents in the form of reports and a college newsletter, which both include information about how students are developing essential skills.
Measure it
Students in Phase 2, 3 and 4 are given a baseline score in relation to skills, which is revisited at the end of the year. Students personal targets are given a skill focus which is tracked across their curriculum and commented against by staff and students. Students are given regular opportunities to showcase skills and receive formative feedback as evidenced through involvement in specially curated activities and events; e.g. charity abseil, NATSPEC sports day. Students complete reflective logs in relation to acquisition of skills, in WEX, D?n?D and DoE, and are given written feedback by tutors, job coaches and employers. This rage of evidence supports tutors to identify where students are in relation to the Skills Builder continuum e.g. 'Getting started', 'intermediate' etc.
Focus tightly
Each student at Arden receives a bespoke timetable. Arden?s focus is for all students is to ?Develop Skills for happy and fulfilling future?. Skills are discussed and evidenced on an individual basis in the form that is most relevant to the student. Explicit teaching of skills is most evident through Work experience placements where it is given real life, future focussed context.
Keep practising
There are opportunities for students across phases to participate in activities which exercise the essential skills. The college operates a person-centred approach to curriculum planning, which encompasses a wide range of academic focussed and enrichment subjects, from sports and exercise (Teamwork) to art and design (creativity), and independence skills (aiming high) to sensory activities (staying positive).
Bring it to life
Opportunities for all students to apply and develop skills outside of college are common practice across all phases in college, with community and work based learning inclusive in the curriculum as standard. College works with a number of employers, both large businesses including Premier Inn, OXFAM and Salvation Army and local independent businesses also. For some of our students, being able to access a busy supermarket, which challenges their sensory processing difficulties is an example of how they aim high on a daily basis.
What's next
Arden will continue to expand the programme, ensuring all students benefit consistently. We aim to develop more diverse teaching resources to further support teachers in embedding skills into the curriculum for our most complex learners. We will sustain monitoring and assessment systems to continuously record the award's effectiveness and use the data to make quantative evaluations. We would hope to have the opportunity to share and the programme's impact and inspire more schools and colleges to join.
