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Water Mill is a one form Primary School in Selly Oak, Birmingham. Due to its proximity to the University and Hospital, we have many families stay with us for just a short period, maybe 2 years, whilst parents complete their University placement. As such we have very high mobility, around 1/3 of the school leave each year and a new 1/3 join. In July 2018 the school was rated as Requires Improvement by Ofsted. Since then we have placed Skills Builder (our Owlstanding Skills) at the heart of school improvement. We recognised the importance of the essential skills across the curriculum, especially for our mobile community.
Overall impact
By following the Accelerator Program, we have been able to keep skills development as a prominent whole school priority. Working towards the awards provides motivation and engagement from the whole team. As a leader, the time to stop and reflect with the advisors has given me the space to step back from the day to day manic nature of school life and go back to our key aims and objectives to pick apart the bits that are working and get inspiration on where we can go next.
Keep it simple
We wanted to tie Skills Builder into a framework that was easily accessible so we designed our 'Owlstanding skills' that also included our School Values and British Values. Posters were produced to go into every classroom. There are also a number of additional displays around school. We used Staff CPD, Pupil assembly time and Parent meetings to promote the role of Skills Builder in the school. Each week, the whole school focusses on a specific skill that is highlighted on the class displays. Teachers look out for examples of children demonstrating these skills and celebrate them by adding children's names to the display or choosing them for the 'Celebration Assembly' on Friday.
Start early, keep going
From the start of their time in school, we expose children to the language of skill development and identify the small manageable steps that they can take to improve. The Skills Builder Hub has been great at providing teachers with the support and resources to specifically teach these incremental steps to ensure the all children are able to access the framework. This early start is continued through every thread of our community life, it's genuinely part of every lesson and every assembly in school. We share the launch pad and Benchmark tools frequently through social media, emails and letters and staff and governors even use the benchmark to reflect on their own skill development.
Measure it
The Skills Builder Hub has been key to Skills Builder's success at Water Mill. Each month teachers are expected to update any progress that children have made based on their explicit skills teaching. Particularly in light of Covid, this has allows us to pick out the different challenges that each cohort faces. Meaning we can focus intervention, in the form of challenge days or different tailored activities that address gaps. We can then see the impact of these coming through the assessments also. The best thing about the Hub is how quick and simple it is to update; staff see the task as manageable and something that provides effective insight.
Focus tightly
By having our focus weeks and focus months, we specifically drill down into the skill that we are working on. Whilst incidental coverage has a big impact, it's the explicit teaching and direct instruction that ensures skill progression is progressive. We also map out the skills across all areas of the curriculum so that staff know the opportunities that can easily be used to pick out the skills in the existing learning. Finally, we love a whole school project and through Big Weeks (Like Enterprise Week) or Term long projects (like 'Rebuilding our Community'). Staff have the time set aside to dig down into the detail and nuance of progressive skill development.
Keep practising
Skills Builder and our Owl-standing Skills really do underpin all we do at Water Mill Primary School. They are brought to life right across the academic curriculum and beyond, including Afterschool clubs, Weekend Sports, Choir Performances or Ballet Try Outs. Because both the resources and cross curricular links are specifically picked out for staff, it's really easy for anyone in school to pick it up and run with it. Now that we've been doing it for some time, it's become a key part of our community's shared language. This in turn produces increased returns as talking about skill development becomes just second nature.
Bring it to life
Beyond the general school curriculum, we really value the real life opportunities to develop and apply the skills that have been explicitly taught. We prioritised funding to access the 10 hour projects for every class in the school, tapping into the great resources and saving staff workload. Pupils have also really benefitted from working on projects with national partners, like Wates Construction. We even took the whole school off timetable for a half term following Covid to focus on how to work well together again. Children see the Owlstanding skills as a fundamental aspect of how we work together and can articulate really effectively the value of the skills and how they can progress further. In a recent Ofsted Inspection, Personal Development was rated as Outstanding, with inspectors specifically describing the impact of our skill development as a pivotal factor in the school's provision.
What's next
Skills Builder feels like it's built into the fabric of the school life now and I can't see us returning to a time when skill development isn't at the heart of our curriculum. Now it's time to step beyond the provision offered by the partnership to forge our own way. We are already making links ourselves with employers and vocational resources. We aim to find aspirational role models who look and sound like our community to demonstrate how these skills are key to their own success.
