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Rushden Primary Academy is located in a market town and civil parish in North Northamptonshire, England. The academy opened its doors to pupils in September 2015 and reached full capacity (370 children) in September 2021. During this academic year (22/23), the academy has worked tirelessly to embed its values and ethos. The ethos (respect, pride and achieve) and values (culture, health, aspirations, identify and relationships) now build the foundations to the identify of our academy and our children. Skills Builder has continued to be perfect tool to support this growth and journey. Stemming from the fundamental vision for our academy is our curriculum, which is entwined with the eight essential skills. Following this, our policies, which make reference to how the skills support our behaviour expectations and equality offer. Then finally, our community, which the Skills Builder mission is shared with, which thoroughly ensures that children have been given planned opportunities to build foundations towards their development using the eight powerful attributes for them relate to. Every child has been awarded for their commitment in being able to identify these skills and grow confidence in building them in to their own life journey. Through specifically created tasks, challenges and experiences, children are building on themselves and each other, which is impacting our academy's children, present and future!
Overall impact
Overall, the Accelerator programme has impacted all stages of our success throughout the year. It has supported us by developing the baseline of our aspirations for what we wanted to achieve and has enabled us to assess what our community could do already. Then, it gave us ideas and resources to support with the planning and logistics side of how to implement the programme successfully. Before allowing our children, wider community and staff to properly get to grips with the steps within each essential skill. With the support of the strategy meetings and support days, our Skills Leader has gained creative ways to build a stronger foundation for our children and fundamentally, these ideas have been circulated throughout network groups to successfully be implemented within other settings too. The project days have allowed structure, where sometimes it is hard to obtain when focusing on the teaching and learning of essential skills. It has allowed hands on contextual activities to take place, which have allowed our children to grow and be confident in developing. Witnessing children, who would normally sit and listen to children leading a group of children with their creative solutions to being eco-friendly, has been a particular highlight of mine. Skills Builder has provided us with the foundations to allow our children to break down their barriers and exceed their limitations. It is accessible for all abilities, age groups and needs, which is why it will continue to be embedded within our school for many years to come!
Keep it simple
Consistent to last year, all classrooms have visual cues and teachers are constantly applying the language of the skills throughout all aspects of the curriculum, these are planned for and reference the individual, relevant steps (depending on the needs of the class) within each skill. Our behaviour policy encourages our children to lead their everyday lives reflecting on the fundamental skills and being recognised with positive noticing and a team point system, which the eight skills form part of. Our academy improvement plan strides to build on our overall offer and Skills Builder is a important key that makes this happen. Our Skills Ambassadors ensure the messages are passed to every individual within the academy by supporting the Skills Leader in successfully launching our termly skill focus, rewarding individuals for fulfilling a skill successfully and sharing the new Showcase activities that children and parents can work together on throughout every term (each term changes).
Start early, keep going
Skills Builder is delivered discretely and collaboratively throughout our curriculum. Within our long term and medium term planning, all skills are referenced to across all subject areas and subsequently all learning opportunities. Then, a discrete termly overview is designed (the Skills Leader plans this), which allows opportunities for children to access a range of tasks that are relevant to academy's termly skill. These have ranged from a discussion about local leaders and their impacts to teambuilding games related to our red kite values to collaboratively creating poems relevant to each class to watching some Hub materials and working on building the important exit messages into each classes identify. 80% of our children from EYFS to Year 6 have actively taken part in our Showcase opportunities, where they have worked outside of school to produce an age appropriate presentation, which they share and celebrate with their peers at the end of each term.
Measure it
This year, our academy trialled requesting the KS2 children to benchmark their capabilities and personal attributes against the individual steps of each skill. This provided teachers with the initial starting point on where to build their individuals from, which has proved to be successful. Some teachers (preferably in KS1) have preferred being reflective and assessing their class as a whole from the beginning of each term to the end using the formative assessment on the Hub. Using the formative assessment will be an expectation for all staff next year and with a new middle leader staffing structure, this can be monitored on a team level. Finally, now that the curriculum has had its first year of completion, medium term plans can be adapted and these assessments will inform the teaching of the essential skills depending on the needs of each year group.
Focus tightly
Using the framework overview, all classrooms have weekly planned opportunities using the Hub's workshops, Topical Talk and purposeful Skills Builder Project Days. The overview follows the Rosenshine's principles of instruction and is how our academy delivers core teaching and learning. Sessions start by reactivating what the children do well with already and then teaches them ways to enhance the essential skills at an appropriate level. From this teaching, the children are encouraged to work collaboratively to model good practise and then allows the individuals time to focus on themselves on an independent level. During this time children decipher how they wish their essential skills to grow within their lives, which incorporates their unique identity and beliefs. Parents are made aware of the termly focus and have a key role in ensuring this is embedded too, before we reflect and assess the success rates of the attributes. Targets are them set to deepen skills moving forward.
Keep practising
This year, we have taken part in four project days: Free To Be Me, Making Changes, Brilliant Books and Trash to Treasure. Using the resources provided by Skills Builder, the Skills Leader has formulated these to be appropriate for every child of the academy and delivered successfully. At Christmas, the children did a week long project to explore, design, make and evaluate a fashion accessory for their teacher as a present. This motivated children's engagement and gave structure, when concentration was minimal and excitement was in abundance! Our sport's club provision refers to the Skills Builder framework, a Girl Group club works on building leadership skills preparing them for the transition into Year 6 and our Eco-Ambassadors weekly embark on making an active change to the school environment through the implementation of the skills. Furthermore, The Career Drive allowed parent volunteers to engage individuals in their career journeys reflecting on the essential skills required.
Bring it to life
Successfully, KS2 pupils have worked with Lloyds through Primary Futures, to either support in making decisions with recruitment or inventing imaginative solutions to areas of the company wanting to be more eco efficient. Representatives provide feedback, such as, 'The students clearly demonstrated their essential skills and it was an absolute pleasure to experience. Please pass on congratulations to them on their hard work', which is shared with everyone. Across the year, we have tracked our children's aspirations by auditing their ideas termly, this has enabled our Skills Leader to facilitate exciting career options for our Career Drive. These aspirations are shared with visitors and each classroom window encompasses the range of career paths are children intend on following - these formulate conversations which help to motivate children in areas they might find hard. Finally, displays around the academy encompass and celebrate the jobs that staff have taken to end up at Rushden Primary Academy.
What's next
Next year, the academy hopes to continue with the high quality curriculum, which is now embedded, to seek further links with other outside employers and the wider community. We wish to establish these stronger links to enable children to thrive in each essential skill and gain further evidence to prepare to become a flagship school in the near future.
