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Hexham Middle School is a coeducational, deemed secondary school, located in Hexham, a historic market town in Northumberland, England. The school serves pupils typically between the ages of 9 and 13, covering Key Stages 2 and 3 of the National Curriculum. As part of the Hadrian Learning Multi-academy Trust, Hexham Middle School benefits from close collaboration with Queen Elizabeth High School, providing a seamless transition for pupils progressing to higher education levels. The catchment of the school draws upon the local population of Hexham as well as the wider-spread towns and villages in the Tynedale area of West Northumberland.
Overall impact
We have been on an exciting journey for the past 3 years. This year, we have managed to maintain momentum and sustain buy-in from different stakeholders. Embedding Skills Builder into CPD and wider inset has helped to give staff the opportunity to reflect on their own understanding and knowledge of Skills Builder. We have a programme of 'greatness'. Our original ethos is 'an outstanding eagerness to learn'. The Accelerator programme aligns with our desire for great ambition, great learning and great experiences. Skills Builder is now very visible in our school. Our website is signposting more about Skills Builder. Our school environment also has visual reminders for pupils and staff. You can ask pupils now about Skills Builder and the overwhelming majority of them talk with increasing confidence about the 8 essential skills. Pupil panels are now showing that pupils are able to reflect on how they are developing, applying and in some cases mastering essential skills in their school life as well as opportunities further afield. Being part of the accelerator programme encourages us to 'keep getting better'. We are not complacent - our Skills Leader activitely engages with strategy meetings and knows what we are doing well at and where we need to go next. Having an Education Associate with Skills Builder provides that crucial relationship and connection to drive change and sustain positive impacts.
Keep it simple
We always provide an introductory session at the start of the academic year exploring what personal development is, and this includes a focus on Skills Builder. This is in the form of an assembly delivered by the school's Skill Leader and Assistant Headteacher for Personal Development. Staff CPD also prioritises an annual refresher on Skills Builder. We have also embedded the universal language into the careers curriculum inset. Simiarly, PSHE Inset Training for KS2/KS3 teachers who provide further explicit instruction to pupils. This staff team, dive deeper into core workshop and assembly resources in PSHE lessons. Making Skills Builder overt across the school in the form of icon displays and specific information boards has increased prominence. Our school website and policies articulate and embed Skills Builder. For the past two years, we have alignment of our pupil tracking of participation with Skills Builder. The Participation Pledge documentation illustrates this development. We reward pupils for reflecting regularly throughout the year and pupils earn P- Points (Praise Points) that they can trade in for treats.
Start early, keep going
All pupils at Hexham Middle School are learning about Skills Builder essential skills. Our Key Stage 3 cohort currently have more guided learning hours, given the dedicated time in PSHE lessons (once a half term). This however will change next year for our Key Stage 2 cohort in PSHE. We promote the use of HomeZone resources with parents/carers, but agree that more could be done to sustain this. The Personal Development section of the school website highlights the importance of Skills Builder. We have mapped out how skills are taught explicity across the year. The Skills Builder half-termly focus is shared with pupils in our assembly programme carefully aligns themes to link with Skills Builder skills. We have a document on SharePoint that outlines how Skills Builder is woven across form-time sessions and assemblies. A narrative is provided to give all staff a clear explanation of our intentions and sequencing of explicit instruction.
Measure it
We have taken a pragmatic approach to measuring impact, to ensure we get sustained buy-in from key stakeholders. It has to work for your school context. Again, our form tutors play a crucial role in capturing pupil reflections on the application of skills. An updated Participation Pledge document was launched this year to explore how pupils are evidencing how they are developing and mastering Skills Builder skills, as part of their wider enrichment and extracurricular school lives. This documentation is reviewed by form tutors half termly - time has been built into form time for form tutors to instigate meaningful conversations where necessary, picking up on potential skills gaps and the recognition of possible opportunities. Pupils can also receive P Points on Class Charts to showcase how they are making progress in applying the use of skills across the curriculum. This data helps us to celebrate and monitor the impact. We can track this against key cohorts.
Focus tightly
A fundamental cornerstone of our personal development offer at Hexham Middle School is the support afforded to pupils by their form tutor. These staff are deemed to be the experts in our pupils, given that they see them everyday. Having said this, we have high expectations on our form tutors to deliver excellent, explicit instruction of Skills Builder. Subject teachers also play an increasing role in this endeavour of the continuous prevelance of Skills Builder. This year, a wider-school focus on Personal Development has stimulated a review and update of curriculum planning. One example of this has seen the year 6 DT curriculum incorporated Skills Builder steps into presentation skills. Our form tutors are asked to complete diagnostic reports before delivering 25-minute form-time sessions and then record progress of the class, feeding into half-termly Skills Builder Hub reports. Year 8 pupils have continued to receive group career guidance focusing on application of skills in the work place. Our independent careers advisor team help check pupils' knowledge of the universal skills when applying them to the world of work and the next steps of their transition.
Keep practising
There are a variety of ways we enable pupils' praticising and applying Skills Builder. Our form time provision is the anchor for the programme. This year we have rolled out Respect, Engage, Aspire (REA) Days - this is a range of activities that pupils can elect for every term. Pupils are encouraged to demonstrate suggested universal skills. Our Great Experiences document in the Personal Development section of the school website now maps out where you can expect to develop Skills Builder skills; these events and activities are capture-all opportunities and are aligned with other curriculum planning, coordinated by curriculum leaders and other key staff. Pupils also know how the clubs they attend are developing universal skills which are advertised on club posters and shared on the information monitor at the front of school. External providers of sporting and creative activities are also informed that we are a Skills Builder school, helping us to build and share the common language of Skills Builder. Step skills are being explored and made more explicit in lessons, such as in DT, where pupils this year presented their design ideas to peers and evaluated how they met design and Speaking skills outcomes.
Bring it to life
This year, we have once again committed to using Skills Builder Challenge Days resources.These are now key events in our school calendar; we value teaching our pupils all about the universal skills in exciting ways. Our long-term plan is for all pupils to have experienced 2 Skills Builder Challenge Days every academic year. Revisiting the skills in the familiar format is helping to build effective mental models. We have also engaged with Young Green Briton Challenge (a Skills Builder company) this year and intend to do so next year. Our Year 7 pupils took part in the new North East Regional Hub competition. Pupils worked with mentors from a local (international) company called Egger, to develop ideas for a real-life enterprise project. One team went down to City Hall in London, having got through at the regional heat, for the National Final, and we were joint winners in one category. This year we engaged with Skills Builder Careers Insight workshops on 6th March involving all year 8 pupils. This was the first time we have engaged and look forward to developing further next year.
What's next
We would like to move towards being a flagship school. There is further work to implement and use Benchmark to establish the solid foundations and provide a legacy for pupils once they leave school. We would also like to engage more with Career Insights. We know that the time pupils have outside of school is important for their own personal development, including their social and mental wellbeing. We do however acknowledge two of our ethos values of Engage and Aspire. With this in mind, we intend to publicise the use of Launchpad, for our secondary pupils (Year 7 and 8). Our goal is to embed habits for learning that will support pupils' self regulation and metacognitive abilities. We have plans to embed Skills Builder Career Challenge resources next year (especially in Key Stage 2) to support our careers programme. These resources support Gatsby Benchmark 2 - Labour Market Information. We have also mapped Aspire Icons against different skills. This is being launched next year.
