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The George Eliot Academy is a place where both pupils and staff feel a real sense of belonging. We are passionate about our vision to develop successful pupils who are independent, well-rounded, behave with integrity, and most importantly live happy and fulfilled lives. At The George Eliot Academy, we provide a caring environment which develops and nurtures the values, skills and attributes for creating good citizens with a strong moral purpose, who make positive contributions to their society. We aim to provide our students with opportunities and experiences, that engenders in them the love of learning and equips them to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing society and are ready and willing to grasp the opportunities available to them. We got involved with Skills Builder Accelerator as we recognise the importance of pupils have a range of skills to equip them for their future after The George Eliot Academy.
Overall impact
The essential skills has made a positive impact on pupils and staff. Pupils understand the importance of essential skills and know the importance of being able to develop them to help them in future life. It has allowed us to break down employability to pupils so that they can understand the importance of developing essential skills for employability in the future. It has been lovely each term for pupils who have worked particularly hard on particular key skills be awarded in our rewards assemblies for this.
Keep it simple
There has been a focus on all of the eight essential skills across school life. They were introduced during PSHE lessons and are consistently referred back to throughout each lesson in the school. The icons are included on all lesson outcome slides, which are consistently used in all the curriculum areas; each lesson, teachers explicitly link two of the essential skills to their lesson. This emphasises the importance of the skills to staff and pupils. During family lunch, the Discussion of the Day allows pupils to practise their speaking and listening skills. Also our Study Skills programme, links with the essential skills to show how skills can support independent study and are not just relevant to curriculum time. Communication has been sent home regarding study skills and within this the links to the essential skills are seen. There is a Career Champion in each subject department who works to implement and support the essential skill focus for each half term.
Start early, keep going
All pupils have explicit teaching of the essential key skills throughout all PSHE lessons and through the form time programme . In the reflection room, pupils have some skills-based intervention using the reflection books on the different skills. Pupils also have the opportunity to gain merits via ClassCharts for demonstrating the essential skills; each time they receive a merit, a message is sent home. Parents therefore have understanding when their child has demonstrated their key skills. Communications go home regarding careers, enrichment and study skills which all include links to the essential key skills.
Measure it
ClassCharts allows us to monitor how many merits pupils achieve for each of the essential skills. This feeds into our rewards assemblies, which happen once a term. Pupils who receive the most merits linked to each skill, during that term in each year group will receive a reward. Data for skill progression can be accessed and analysed. This allows me to monitor and evaluate where the stronger skills are within the school. Each pupil has a Career Passport, which allows them to reflect on three of the essential skills and then reflect on how they have been successfully developing these skills. As part of the flexible support time, worksheets were created for Aiming High to support cover staff in PSHE lesson. These sheets ask pupils to self-assess themselves before and after completing the activities and includes the Framework to support cover staff with their assessment of learners. Formative assessment takes place at the end of curriculum lessons through reflection activities.
Focus tightly
Each PSHE lesson links to different skills, and this is mapped in the curriculum, using the Universal Framework. In some PSHE lessons, Hub short lessons are being used at the start of PSHE sessions to explicitly teach skills. To support where there may be cover lessons, the flexible support time included in our Skills Builder programme has been dedicated to creating offline resources, to teach individual steps from the Aiming High framework and provide learners with opportunities to practise them. Workbooks from the Hub have been printed and set for cover work during PSHE. In the reflection room, the behaviour manager has workbooks for each skill. These are used with students and a focus skill is chosen depending on their need.
Keep practising
All staff use the merit system on ClassCharts, which allows staff to award merits for pupils demonstrating essential skills. Every department has a focus skill; the Career Champion in each department area creates an action plan at the start of each half term, outlining their skill focus and how this will feed into their curriculum area. One of these champions attended the skills leader training day to receive further training. As per whole-school policy, each lesson has to begin with a lesson outcome slide, which outlines two focus skills and how they link to the lesson. All extra-curricular activities have been mapped with essential skills; there is a document with the extra-curricular activities, brief description and which skill is practiced. Pupils in year 7-9 participate in family lunch, which encourages them to practice their speaking and listening skills. PowerPoints are created centrally and shared with staff, and ensure consistency in the skills builder language being used.
Bring it to life
Staff have the reflection resource handbook to support with post-experience skill reflections. The options process featured essential skills and this process highlighted which subjects developed which skills and how this linked to careers prospects. Year 8 pupils had an Enterprise Day, where there was a clear focus on the essential skills. Year 7 pupils have visited the University of Birmingham to hear about how skills feed into Further Education. In July, Year 10 pupils will have a mock interview day with employers from local businesses and industries. As part of this, pupils complete an application form, where they have to provide evidence of three focus skills. The interviewers introduce themselves using skills language and will be asking about essential skills in the interviews. All pupils have the opportunity to attend Help a Pupil on your Lunchbreak. Employers link their work to the essential skills. A variety of employers have attended these.
What's next
We plan to look at creating some more of the offline paperless reflection sheets for all of the essential key skills in case of staff sickness, this means that pupils will still be able to learn and develop their essential skills. Using staff CPD to deliver inputs around the essential skills to continue with the consistent approach across the school. We want to continue to build on our current successes of the program by incorporating them into the subject areas even more using our career champions.
