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St George`s is an all through school from Early Years to Post 16 with 1600+ pupils serving the district of Thanet. The Primary site and Secondary sites are separate. The vast majority of pupils are of White British Background across the school (86%) though we have 14 different ethnic groups. We have well above national average number of Educational Health Care Plans and the largest number of Looked After Children in Kent. We are in an area of high unemployment,with high levels of deprivation. We wanted to use Skills Builder as a way of helping classroom teachers refer to Careers in their lessons without fear of having to know specific job pathways and to allow pupils to recognise these transferable skills.
Overall impact
The programme has allowed staff to feel more confident in referring to careers in their subject lessons. They can refer to the skill of the term in whatever way fits their scheme of work and do not have to find a specific job to explain an aspect of careers. Pupils are far more aware of the skills and some are able to speak about this with confidence. The icons are becoming increasingly familiar and visitors to the school have also noted them.
Keep it simple
I decided to pick a skill focus for each term. We have 6 skills - Term 1 being Aiming High, Term 2 Communication, Term 3 Problem Solving, Term 4 Teamwork, Term 5 Staying Positive and Term 6 Creativity. These have been displayed on TVs throughout the school, used in form time tutor slides, and referred to in lesson plans. We have targeted year 7 lessons only this year. For other year groups it can be considered a 'soft launch' and staff are welcome to use them in lessons if they wish. We have introduced an achievement log specifically for Careers Skills that some staff have already awarded to pupils. Staff are starting to refer to skills in their assemblies.
Start early, keep going
Year 7 have had the greatest input of skills builder ideas this year, particularly targeting science lessons (which are delivered by Year 7 tutors in our school) and in PSHE. On top of this, we send out a termly Careers Newsletter with information on for parents, teachers and governors. All these stakeholders have had the chance to complete online surveys to see how awareness of the skills has increased.
Measure it
In the first part of the year, staff have got to grips with Skills Builder and skills have been discussed in class, but not measured formally - it has been more of reflective. However, in Term 6, staff have used a baseline assessment regarding Creativity which Year 7 pupils have self-assessed before beginning the term. Staff are using this to inform their teaching. We are having a Creativity day in the first week of July which we hope will help to drive this skill home. This week is our annual Community Week and this will allow it to have another aspect - what creative skills can be used to help our local community in some way? Year 7 pupils will then self-assess in the last week of term to see if they feel that they are better prepared and informed.
Focus tightly
Skills Builder is now mapped onto the Year 7 Science scheme of work, and staff have been busy to add it to the Year 8 scheme of work too. In all subjects across the school, the skills builder icons are starting to appear on PowerPoint slides and this is again being rolled out from Year 7 upwards. The early planning for next year involves restructuring our form tutor slides to have greater references to the skills and more activities for pupils to hone them. We will use lessons on the Hub/reflective resources to help teach specific skill steps in these sessions.
Keep practising
The Science team are trying to build the skills into curriculum work. It is also in the PSHE curriculum as well. Lesson observation sheets used by Senior Leaders refer to skills in lessons. We are testing out the Skill day this term and if it works then we would look to build in a skill day each term next year. Our STEM club has had an overhaul and is now trying to tie with the skill of the term. We are also getting the extracurricular sports clubs to refer to these skills as well.
Bring it to life
Our new Work Experience diary that will used by Year 10 in July has a section all about the 6 skills we use, and pupils are asked to reflect on these as part of their write-ups. Our Careers advisor does a Year 7 'WoW' assembly each summer term, and this year has included the skills as part of his talk. We have a Careers Fair in term 6, and all external stallholders will be given a copy of our skills sheet to refer to. We had a company running a Rise workshop with our Year 10 pupils before their work experience and they used the skills builder in their sessions.
What's next
Next year, we will be rolling out the programme with Year 8 as well. Year 7 tutors next year will be PE and technology staff, and they will be encouraged to use the skills as often as they can in Year 7 lessons, in the same way that science staff will be continuing their programme with Year 8. The plan will be to repeat this again the year after, so that all of Key Stage 3 have skills as part of their curriculum. The main challenge next year will be the retirement of two members of the Careers team and we will be looking to bring in fresh ideas - while building on what we have achieved this year with our Quality in Careers Standard award.
