At Percy Shurmer Academy, we want each and every child inspired to choose a Remarkable Life. At Percy Shurmer, we intend to provide a wide range of inclusive opportunities, that ensure our children have a secure body of knowledge and effective critical thinking skills, which enable them to lead a life with the highest of aspirations and contribute to life in modern Britain and the global community. We work with Skills Builder Partnership. Skills Builder enables our children to access a range of lessons where we can develop skills they need throughout their education and beyond. By preparing them for the world of work from an early age will enable them to understand that they have the potential to be anything they choose to be in the future. We are aware that we are preparing children for jobs and careers that may not even exist yet, but there are key skills they will need. We strongly believe that essential skills unlock learning in the classroom, boost academic outcomes, perseverance, self-belief and instils good habits in our children before leaving. They give children the cultural capital needed to improve social mobility, productivity, well-being and life satisfaction.
Research has shown that building these eight essential and integral life skills can support the emotional wellbeing and academic success of children and young people, as well as preparing them for life beyond school. Skills Builder has developed a Universal Framework that breaks each of these essential skills down into 16 teachable steps. We use this framework to teach and practise each of the eight skills at the appropriate level throughout school life. A mastery approach underpins the framework – that means, no steps should be skipped and only when a step is mastered should learners move onto the next one. Children will be given regular opportunities to practise and apply each skill across our curriculum.
Skills Builder supports children in:
Understanding their existing skills
Reflecting on where their essential skills currently are, and being able to identify any gaps they might have
Seeing what progress looks like
Being able to see what the next steps are to improve their essential skills further
Joining the dots
Using a consistent language and understanding of essential skills to understand how they are used and practiced in lots of different settings
Capturing success
Seeing progress and being able to better articulate their skills
