Skills Builder Award

At Perseid School, we are dedicated to providing every pupil with the highest quality careers education, which is pupil-centric, raises aspirations for life, encourages independence, builds confidence and empowers all pupils to plan and prepare for adulthood. Our personalised approach to careers education aims to inspire the potential of every pupil, and support every individual to discover their best next step. Careers education is embedded within our engaging and highly-aspirational curriculum and this is complemented by a consideration of the skills and traits our pupils already possess, and the ones they need most help in developing. We decided to get involved with the Skills Builder Accelerator Programme as we believe that by embedding the eight essential skills of employability across all subjects, this would support consistency of skill development in all aspects of learning and life. As a result, we are confident that pupils at Perseid School can aspire to and realise a wide range of destinations in which they can implement their eight essential skills.

On behalf of our whole school community, we are thrilled to share that Perseid School has been awarded the Skills Builder Silver Award for demonstrating our commitment to building pupils' essential skills to support them to succeed as they prepare for their best next step into adulthood.

Findings from Skills Builder report:

Pupils are more aware of what skills they currently have and what skills they themselves want to develop to reach their goals which has enabled them to develop their self-reflection skills and take more ownership over their learning and progress as they work towards their best next step.

Through teaching within lessons, parent workshops, information sharing on our school website and focus assemblies, the whole school community including students, teachers and parents have all developed a good awareness of the eight essential skills and this is evident through the language used across the school.

Students attend weekly assemblies during with they can reflect on the focus skill of the week and receive certificates to praise them for their progress towards this skill following focused skills teaching opportunities, off-site visits or learning around preparation for adulthood.

Essential skill development is incorporated into all areas of learning which enables pupils across Perseid Upper School to build their essential skills including in our whole school Enrichment assemblies, special days and events, PSHE lessons and focus weeks such as sport, art and careers week.

As pupils approach transition, they have a timetabled Preparation for Adulthood lesson which are based on developing essential skills as they prepare for their best next step.

In addition, all pupils learn about essential skills in pastoral time, developing knowledge of the essential skills through the expanded framework and linking this skill to learning in morning group tasks and other lessons during the day, before reflecting on their progress at the end of each day.

A copy of the case study can be found here.