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St. Joseph's Catholic College is a fully comprehensive school that serves north Wiltshire. In 2019 - 2020, the school completely overhauled its careers and PSHE programme: rewriting schemes of work and reviewing how this could be made part of a wider vision of personal development for all students. As part of this, the school looked to make the mastery of skills that are of interest to colleges and to employers a key feature of schemes of work and lesson plans. The aim was to make students explicitly aware of and to develop an in depth understanding of and proficiency in these skills as a preparation for a future life. An advertisement for Skills Builder Accelerator was seen via our local careers hub and this programme encapsulated everything that St. Joseph's was trying to achieve.
By applying this skills mastery to the careers and PSHE curriculum, all teachers became familiar with the eight essential skills. The aim is for the skills vocabulary to become a part of the whole curriculum in the future.
Overall impact
The Accelerator programme has been part of a wider process of change at St. Joseph's. A new philosophy/vision has evolved and developed under the umbrella term of "Personal Development". As we move into the next academic year, this is a main school priority and is seen as a factor that will propel our students forward, motivating them to achieve more, influencing the culture of the school. This meant to complement our academic provision, but is to be treated with equal consideration. The CDI's Six Areas of Learning will provide the foundation, with career related learning and PSHE being the bedrock of our provision, augmented by our extra-curricular provision. This can be directly monitored and the impact measured through students' proficiency in the eight essential skills. A particular highlight that encapsulates all was the sight of year 9 girls on the Celebration of Sport day winning the tug of war, showing teamwork, one leader, staying positive and problem solving (the winning strategy) - and talking about it in this way. This is beginning to be the culture of our school.
Keep it simple
The language of Skills Builder is integrated into all schemes of work and lesson plans for PSHE for Years 7 - 11. The eight essential skills have been integrated into the spiral curriculum and are a common thread through all year groups and all three PSHE strands: Health and Wellbeing, Living in the Wider World and Relationships. In each year, there are specific activities that directly build the skills: all year groups have fundraising activities (Teamwork, Leadership, Creativity); Year 7 has lessons that focus on dreams, ambitions and goals (Aiming High, Staying Positive); Year 8 has lessons that explore different career sectors and the skills required (Listening, Speaking, Aiming High, Teamwork); Year 9 focuses on developing specific skills in negotiation and persuasion (Problem-Solving) ; Year 10 looks at personal presentation skills; Year 11 draws all the essential skills together in its exploration of post-16 goals and how to attain them.
Start early, keep going
Because the eight essential skills have been embedded into the careers/PSHE programme, this starts students off in Year 7 learning the language of Skills Builder early. The language is easy to understand (for example, "Staying Positive" vs. "Resilience"), which means that it is easily understood by Year 7s when they arrive. During this year, the eight essential skills have been introduced to all students in PSHE. Due to timetabling constraints (through being in bubbles all year), only students in Year 7 and 8 have had any consistency with tutors. Parental involvement came during lockdown v3, where they were alerted to Skills Builder Skills Challenges. This has been a slow up-take, as parents and carers are only just starting to widely read the weekly briefing that is being sent home.
Measure it
Colleagues in Years 7 and 8 have been more conscientious in using the Skills Builder resources and using the diagnostic tools for their classes. However, an incidental win has been through our use of the Grofar careers platform. Students are able to monitor their own individual skills profiles, whilst teachers have been able to record careers/activities/enrichment activities where students have used the essential skills. The top five evidenced skills across all year groups are: Staying Positive (1,503), Listening (1,462), Aiming High (1,377), Speaking (1,244) and Teamwork (1,127). Not all PSHE activities for the year have been entered yet, so it is anticipated that these figures will be higher by the end of the academic year. This method of monitoring has been useful as it has shown what our students do through their normal curricular and extra-curricular activities, before efforts are made to artificially create essential skills opportunities. It has been quite motivational.
Focus tightly
Currently, direct instruction is found in PSHE lessons where staff want to explicitly develop one of the eight essential skills. Apart from the lessons outlined in question 1, staff will use the videos to motivate and instruct students about how to develop particular skills. All PSHE lesson resources (PowerPoints) reference the main essential skills that is being used/examined in that lesson. This has become a "branding" that is expected by students and staff in careers/PSHE lessons. A development for September 2021 is for the eight essential skills to be used as part of the induction process for Years 7 and 11, who are starting back at school earlier than other year groups. Sessions have been planned that will focus explicitly on staying positive and aiming high, as this is seen as an essential response to the past two interrupted years for these year groups.
Keep practising
This has been a challenge during this academic year, due to the constraints imposed by working in bubbles and being unable to offer enrichment activities. We have been unable to hold our traditional activity days (collapsed curriculum) and have relied on our careers/PSHE offer to provide extra opportunities. Since Easter, sports clubs have run after school. We were able, very recently, to run our Celebration of Sport day, in which all students had to complete problem solving tasks in teams (both classroom and sports field based), develop their team work skills to complete physical and mental challenges, whilst some students got a chance to develop their leadership skills. As of September 2021, activity days and weekly enrichment will resume.
Bring it to life
Throughout this academic year, we have been able to arrange remote encounters with employers, where our students have been able to learn about the skills that are required. Through SSE, we have used remote resources to teach Year 7s in Science and Geography about wind turbines, which resulted in group work industry-based activities guided by employers and teachers. Mathematics and Geography have also worked with Babcock International on developing teaching resources for use across the country; students have given feedback on the suitability and engagement on STEM resources. Students in Years 10 and 11 have all been given opportunities to complete virtual work experience throughout the year; this was popular in lockdown v3! There have also been opportunities to attend virtual workshops with the Appleton Rutherford Laboratories. All these opportunities require all students to use the eight essential skills; this has been logged on Grofar.
What's next
In September 2021, I will deliver training to all staff on the personal development strategy, outlining the key tools that will help them to plan and deliver this. Skills Builder Accelerator resources will be one of their tools to develop the individuals in their tutor groups. There will also be "reminder" training about how to use the Skills Builder digital resources and how to monitor the eight essential skills through Grofar.
