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Sanders School is a mixed-ability Secondary School in Hornchurch, Havering, consisting of approximately 700 students, with Pupil Premium at above national average by 5%. The school is very inclusive and we celebrate originality and diversity and promote student wellbeing.
The Progress 8 scores have improved over the last 3 years with our results being in line with national average. We do not have a sixth form and so teach up to GCSE only, but we do promote Further Education and Higher Education and push students to be aspirational in their plans for studying after their GCSEs.
I became Careers Lead and started to promote careers in the curriculum and I found that students were not able to articulate where they exhibited key employability skills, such as teamwork and leadership. Year 11 students were unable to write about themselves in a personal statement, and so I was keen to work with Skills Builder, to promote employability skills, and show students how they could improve these skills, to give them key skills to secure employment after their studies.
Overall impact
The programme has most definitely improved key employability skills in Year 7 and has given the students confidence in using these skills more than they would have previously. It has also made them better citizens, being more respectful to one another. Staff have also found that using Skills Builder has helped them to develop ways to improve those skills in other lessons and provide activities to enhance these skills in lessons.
Keep it simple
We wanted to embed Skills Builder gradually across the school, so it would be carried out really well by a small amount of people and then grow. So we began with just Year 7. This year group have Skills Builder delivered to them by their form tutors twice a week, totalling 30 minutes. This means that these form tutors are very skilled in delivering the activities and have done this every week, monitored by myself and the Head of Year. So the language of essential skills is used regularly in Form time. We have also done an award ceremony where the top students from each form, and the top form, were given prizes. The key skills are advertised by posters in all of the Year 7 forms.
Start early, keep going
We have kept Skills Builder just with Year 7 this year, as lockdown kept us out of the school for such a long time. So all of Year 7 have the skills embedded in form time. But the Year 7 form tutors also use some of the activities with other year groups during curriculum time, to start to develop these skills in other year groups, and in other contexts, linked to curriculum.
Measure it
Feedback from staff show how the skills are being developed in form time and the form tutors have used the baseline assessment to show progress in the skills that they have looked at. The group skill scores show that all form groups made progress and one student survey revealed 85% of Year 7 students said that they enjoyed the Skills Builder activities and said that they enjoyed learning how to improve these key skills. And 89% said that there skills had improved since beginning the Skills Builder activities.
Focus tightly
Giving Skills Builder to Year 7 form tutors first and incorporating it into form time activities meant that the teachers were delivering activities every week, exposing the students to the skills and showing the development of those skills, so the teaching of the essential skills didn't get lost in the curriculum, or forgotten about. Some of the form tutors began to plan for Skills Builder activities in their own lessons as well, across different year groups.
Keep practising
The form tutors who deliver Skills Builder also use the key skills in their curriculum teaching and highlight how to use the skills and develop them. The skills are used in Science, English and Maths.
Bring it to life
Beyond explicit tutor time sessions, students in Year 7 have been able to show some of the skills through their Ethics and Values lessons, demonstrating Listening, Speaking, Teamwork and Creativity.
What's next
Moving forward I want to embed the skills into further year groups and have more staff teach these skills in form time and use the essential skills and highlight the use during lessons as well. I also want to look at developing a project where these skills are used or purchase an enterprise challenge to carry out in the next academic year, once [Covid] restrictions have been lifted. I want to communicate this to parents as well and encourage them to ask their child to demonstrate the skills when at home, to further embed the skills into everyday life.
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