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Blythe Bridge High School & Sixth Form is a secondary school in Stoke-on-Trent and part of the John Taylor Multi Academy Trust. Our school ethos is Pride, Respect and Kindness and this is incorporated in the whole of our school community. We began to use the Skills Builder essential skills in our careers provision and then applied to join the accelerator programme to improve our approach and outcomes for our students.
Overall impact
After a successful period on the accelerator programme, the success has continued into our second year and developed further into our school community becoming part of our school ethos. The essential skills have been a key driving force behind our whole school career provision. The language of essential skills from the Universal Framework has continues to impact all areas of school life including inside and outside the classroom. We have refined and developed further activities which use the skills to enhance the learning for our students. The approach to using the essential skills across the school community is a team effort including students, staff and key stakeholders.
Keep it simple
Essential skill posters are displayed in all learning environments including the new careers HUB area in school to support a regular sign posting of them in learning activities and promoting the language of the skills. A group of year 7 and 8 leaders has been set up to represent each essential skill and promote them during school careers activities including fairs, enterprise events and workshops. Year 7 and 8 Skills Leaders have also collaborated to celebrate the essential skills in assemblies. Skills Builder Stars have been fully embedded into school life, where during national careers week, around 100 students were nominated for an award. Essential skills being linked to social media posts on Facebook and LinkedIn is part of school policy where necessary. The use of social media helps to promote the language of essential skills also means that parents and the wider community are encouraged to build their essential skills.
Start early, keep going
The ethos of start early matches the vision of our careers programme already embedded in school. Introduction of Skills Leaders in KS3 has had a great impact on raising the awareness and importance of the essential skills with our younger students. Essential skills have been sign posted in all curriculum plans across school and especially in our citizenship curriculum followed by all tutor groups across the school. Students in our Sixth Form as part of Tomorrows Teachers programme have taken part in workshops looking at how the essential skills will impact their choices in the future. Essential skills are communicated and used with our transition events involving Year 5 and 6 during transition days and puzzle day events.
Measure it
Tutors track their groups progress against the essential skills steps during citizenship lessons half termly using the Skills Builder Hub in KS3 and KS4. From the curriculum plans, each group has a skill focus each half term which tutors measure against. From the HUB reports the school can then monitor the whole picture across students. Different focus groups, including our Inspires and SEA (Skills, Employability and Aspirations) groups use Skills Builder Benchmark assessment to assess their skills in more detail. All students from Year 7 to 11 record their careers activities against the skills in a specially designed form to act as a careers diary for students. All work-related learning activities are assessed against the skills and have been refined to support discussions between students, staff and employers. During our Year 6 transition, students are tasked to receive signatures on a card when they have displayed an essential skill.
Focus tightly
All staff regularly and explicitly include the essential skills in their lessons with support of classroom displays and visuals on the work. In citizenship there is teaching of the skills built into the PowerPoints at the start and end of lessons to ensure all form tutors are regularly teaching the skills. To do this effectively, staff use information from the Hub assessments to decide next steps for their class. Focus groups in school participate in self-assessment against the skills and workshops discussing the skills. During Year 11 RONI (Risk of NEET Indicator) group discussion with parents, skills are highlighted to support conversations with students and parents.
Keep practising
Careers champions and Skills Leaders under the leadership of the Careers Leader drive the use of essential skills across the school community. There are many examples where essential skills are used explicitly in lessons. Our extra-curricular has been linked to essential skills and at the start of every academic year when an extra-curricular activity is launched, staff have to record which skills it will develop. We have a reward system where all staff in school regularly acknowledge students work towards the essential skills via a central school reward system. Good practise is regularly shared through email groups and school CPD. The Careers Leader has spoken at Skills Builder network events to share best practise with other schools who are engaged with the accelerator or accelerator+ programme.
Bring it to life
We have many links to different partnerships which support our schools career vision and the importance of the essential skills. They are linked to our annual careers fair which is supported by our Year 7 and 8 skills leaders. We have an annual Year 8 enterprise drop down day which is focussed around all skills featuring videos from different members of staff in school talking about each skill. This year we will deliver the Chocolate Challenge Day for Year 7 which has been simplified to fit our students but still retains tasks which target each skill. Following the use of flexible support with Skills, Sophie Deaville, Year 8 will be launching their own essential skill house competition involving students and staff (Making Bacon). The essential skills work done by Year 7 and 8 leaders has fed into our annual celebration evenings, where one leader from each year group was awarded Careers Champion for the year. The essential skills are also incorporated as part of our careers fair.
What's next
Year 7 and 8 Skills Leaders have been very successful this year and we look to roll out this opportunity into Year 9 next year. The role of Year 9 will look different and we will start to investigate links with primary schools and see how year 9 leaders can support provision there and with transition. Access to the Partnership via Digital Membership next year will continue to strengthen the work done with focus groups in school and how these can be linked to using the benchmark tool.
