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Lapal Primary School is part of Hales Valley Trust. Our Trust is an all-primary academy trust, based in Dudley, West Midlands. Our vision is ‘Learning together, successful forever’ which is underpinned by our school values of perseverance, excellence, kindness, cooperation, and honesty. In our school, we actively promote these values in everything that we do, and the Skills Builder essential skills provide a framework to explicitly teach and apply this. Our curriculum is designed to provide experiences that build a rich understanding of key knowledge and skills by engaging children and developing their curiosity through exploration, as well as developing their character and learning behaviours so that they become successful lifelong learners. The Skills Builder essential skills are a key part of our aim to ensure that our children develop skills and values to work and communicate well with others, appreciate equality and diversity and prepare them for life in the modern world in which we live. We enable our children to build strong relationships and appreciate their roles and responsibilities as part of local, national, and global communities. We develop their character so that they are thoughtful world citizens, healthy individuals, environmentally aware and creative and confident communicators. The essential skills are woven into all that we do and serve as a solid platform for which our children can build success during their journey through Lapal and beyond. As our recent Ofsted inspection report quoted, ‘Pupils are supported to persevere and to develop resilience and strength of character.’
Overall impact
By sharing our Skills Builder work at Lapal, we have already helped other schools to accelerate their progress from their Bronze Award starting point towards the Gold Award. They moved further forward faster, as a result of the school-to-school support. We have shared tangible examples of what each principle looks like at Lapal, we have offered inspiration to a many other schools through school to school support as well as our evidence being showcased at the Partnership Day.
Keep it simple
The essential skills language is part of Lapal's vocabulary;a common language that's universally understood and a key teaching principle. Whole school/phase assemblies are based on cultural/significant events/people, starting with sharing a quality text. We reference the skills, so children understand what they look like in day-to-day life through the context of the book. We celebrate children’s successes using SkillsBuilder language through positive praise/half-termly learning review meetings and end of year reports. Our policies refer to SkillsBuilder, eg. our behaviour policy includes stem sentences for staff to structure positive praise sentences - so all adults can reinforce the skills in a consistent way. All classrooms display the SkillsBuilder posters as a visual cue and also the monthly skill focus, including the steps linked to this. Teachers refer to skills in all subjects-deliberate, well-planned opportunities to apply these skills flood our children’s learning experiences.
Start early, keep going
All students have opportunities for learning/practising the essential skills from EYFS to Year 6. Lapal understands the importance of starting as young as possible, allowing 7years for each child to master each step. ECTs are supported by their mentor to contextualise the learning to their year group – with explicit links made to the small steps in the ECF that ECTs are focusing on during their first two years of teaching. EYFS team are coached to help contextualise the learning to the younger age of the children. Staff record their lessons using IRIS, subsequently working with coaches to reflect on their own teaching to see how they can have even more impact. Only the relevant steps for the current monthly focus are displayed in each classroom, showing where the children are currently working at and the next steps so that children can aspire to reach them. Homezone has been shared with parents to allow them to explore the skills. The skills are included in children's planners.
Measure it
All teachers reflect on the children’s progress against the essential skills using SkillsBuilderHub, completing a monthly assessment to prioritise and inform next steps in teaching. This is done with the children present so that the children are always informed of their progress. The Skills Builder Leader checks on progress at 3 points in the year, following this up with learning conversations with teachers to support them in making the children’s next steps a reality. The assessments determine which resources are used from the SkillsBuilderHub by each teacher. Each classroom displays a poster which indicates which skill the class are currently working on, and the relevant steps which they are developing. Teachers reflect on individual student successes and next steps in their end of year report well as reviewing their progress half-termly through learning review meetings. As part of a class’s transition to a new teacher, the assessment from the SkillsBuilderHub is used as a baseline.
Focus tightly
A discrete weekly session is taught using the resources from the Skills Builder Hub, which is adapted to meet the needs of the children – teachers are now planning their own sessions, linking in the ‘Essential Skills in the News’ resource. The learning of the essential skills does not happen by chance, students have planned, regular and explicit opportunities to build on their existing knowledge of the essential skills. The assessments carried out on the Skills Builder Hub assessment tool informs next steps, so that all teachers pitch their teaching at an appropriate level. An annual Challenge Day is planned in for all year groups. Skills Builder is now part of our school’s Character Development Plan, which captures the work we do with the essential skills alongside everything else we do for our children’s personal development.
Keep practising
Skills are ‘taught not caught.’ The application of the essential skills is deliberately planned into the curriculum and beyond by all teachers, which forms part of our written curriculum. We offer a range of opportunities such as residentials, Bikeability, mini markets, focus day projects, such as Year 6 enterprise challenges, as well as after school clubs for children to practise the skills in different contexts. Children have engaged in range of workshops from external providers and local high schools such as a debate workshops. Our extensive extra-curricular offering ranges from craft and pilates to gardening and music clubs. We have formed a link with a Skills Builder partner who will run a Challenge Cup for our children each year. In addition, we have Skills Spotters in every classroom who will look out for others showing the monthly essential skills focus–stem sentences support their oracy, so that they can succinctly what skills they have seen their peer be successful in.
Bring it to life
During transition, classes spend time with their new teacher engaging in a Challenge Day - enabling them to get to see children applying the essential skills, so that they can see how they can build on these in the new academic year. Our pupil leaders, such as our Pupil Leadership Team and Digital Leaders, also get a chance to not only practise and develop their leadership skills but also the other essential skills in a variety of projects which aim to drive school improvement – this is systematic and deliberately planned into the work that they do, from the application and interview process to the role itself. We link Skills Builder to whole school focus days and special days in the school calendar, whilst also inviting a range of visitors to our school to explore how these skills are used in a professional environment – we we encourage our children to have big dreams and high aspirations. We collaborate on running a Careers Aspiration event for all children in the Halesowen township.
What's next
Build on our development of the essential skills with our Lapal team of professionals. Staff are already able to engage in challenges linked to Skills Builder for example a dragon boat race. We will look for ways to explicitly build on the existing skills of the staff and give them opportunities to apply them. Continue to build our links with local/national and international partners. We have already established a link with Amey. We will look to add to our partner links to further bring the essential skills to life. Maintain a Trust-wide impact on the 7 schools in Hales Valley Trust and beyond. We have inspired new schools to our Trust to become Skills Builder schools and mentored and coached leaders and teachers within these schools so that they can focus on the essential skills by taking inspiration from our journey. It doesn’t matter what colour your uniform is – the essential skills well help us to achieve our Trust vision of ‘Success for All’.
