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The Skills Builder programme has been implemented in all education settings that are part of Horizon Care and Education. Our school supports young people with a range of complex social, emotional health needs, often with additional learning needs. Many of our students have experienced disruption in their education, trauma, or challenges with emotional regulation, which can have a huge impact on their confidence, engagement and ability to access their learning.
We place a strong focus on creating a nurturing, trauma-informed environment where students feel safe, supported, and empowered to grow not just academically, but personally and socially. Life skills, emotional literacy, and positive relationships are at the heart of what we do.
We joined the Skills Builder Accelerator because we saw the importance in a clear, structured approach to teaching essential skills — especially for our students, who often need explicit, repeated, and supportive teaching in areas such as communication, teamwork, and staying positive. These are skills that don’t just support employability; but are key to emotional resilience, independence, and successful integration into the ever-changing world.
The Skills Builder framework uses a common language and has a progression model to help our students understand, practise, and celebrate these skills. It gives our staff the tools to embed skill development across the curriculum and in everyday school life — from classroom routines to targeted interventions and pastoral support.
It supports our objective to help students build not only their confidence and capabilities, but also hopes for the future.
Overall impact
I feel that the overall impact of the Accelerator programme has been good. The Skills Builder framework is integrated into every aspect of school life. The essential skills are integrated into our whole school curriculum. Teachers think about the essential skills used across their schemes of work and will show on their planning where these skills are used. Students have a clear understanding of the essential skills and how these skills will support them in their career journey. They can reflect on the progress they have made with each skill and the impact it has had on their overall development. For example, a KS4 student was able to identify how Skills Builder had enabled him to become a proficient Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master, leading role-playing game sessions. Participating in the ‘Trash to Treasure’ challenge was a fantastic experience for your students and enabled them to really hone their skills. It was amazing to see the students grow in confidence particularly during the presentation stage. Surprisingly, our toy design prototype won the competition this year. The feedback from the judges highlighted how well the students had worked together to create such a brilliant prototype. This success will be shared with parents/carers through our termly careers newsletter.
Keep it simple
At the beginning of the year, staff training was run to ensure that all teaching staff understood what the essentials skills are, how awareness had been built previously.
The essential skills are integrated into our curriculum across all subject areas. Our schemes of work display which skills are being developed across a unit of work and in each lesson. Skills are referenced in individual lessons and students are asked to identify which skills they are using at a given time, reflecting on their progress. All rooms have the essential skills icons and explanation displayed. This year, pupils’ books are given feedback using the Skills Builder icons to support the students’ awareness of the skills they are using when giving feedback. In the corridor there is a display board dedicated to Skills Builder which displays the icons. Support staff mirror the teaching staff using the language of the framework. During off-site activities, staff will discuss with students which skills they will be using and that they witness professionals demonstrating.
Support staff as well as teaching staff are familiar with the essential skills. This means that students can be reminded of which they are using, whether in a lesson, on an activity, partaking in social development opportunities or just around the school.
Start early, keep going
The Skills Builder framework is integrated into every aspect of school life. Staff consistently using the essential skills language, referring to the icons displayed in all rooms, lesson PowerPoints and activity sheets. For example, during Fit to Learn sessions at the beginning of the school day, students involve themselves in activities in which essential skills are used to help them get ready for the day.
When planning their subject, teachers will think about the essential skills used across their schemes of work and will show on their planning where these skills are used. This is used across the Key Stage 3 and 4 planning to ensure that learners at all ages and at all stages of their education have the opportunity to build these essential skills.
Support staff as well as teaching staff are familiar with the essential skills meaning that students can be supported to build their essential skills whilst partaking in activities or opportunities outside of the classroom. This may involve activities out, interventions or social development opportunities. Staff are encouraged to be adaptive and praise students when demonstrating good use of the essential skills outside of the classroom.
Measure it
As a staff team, we use the skills builder hub to measure the students progress against each of the essential skills. This is reviewed on a termly basis. The school have had an influx of new students. Teacher will benchmark the students within the first 6 weeks. Teachers will share good practice and specific subject examples to highlight the progress being made across the essential skills. This is extremely helpful and will help teachers to identify which skills the students need more support to develop.
Focus tightly
The essential skills are integrated into our whole school curriculum. Teaching staff will explicitly teach the skills. For example, during the Trash to Treasure Challenge, each skill was defined “Teamwork means working well with others to achieve a common goal.” This skill would have been modelled or scaffolded by the teaching staff. The students are encouraged to identify what makes good teamwork. Our students benefit from skills being broken down into smaller steps and visual prompts being used. Staff have utilised the skill-specific resources from the Skills Builder website to focus learning about each skill in more depth.
In the classroom, skills can be focused on with precision due to earlier work done highlighting skills used in each lesson in teachers’ schemes of work. During lessons, teachers can give direct instruction to inform students which skills they will be using. For example, a class discussion where a mind map of ideas is to be produced, gives the opportunity for the teacher to draw attention to the speaking, listening and teamwork skills that will be needed to complete this task. This establishes regular opportunities to build their essential skills through direct instruction in the classroom.
Keep practising
As discussed earlier, the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and 4 considers essential skills from the planning stage onwards. This means that teachers are constantly thinking about the skills they are using in their lessons and how they link to the Skills Builder framework. Teachers display the specific skills on visual resources that will be developed throughout the lesson. Students will reflect on how they have applied these skills and complete a simple self-assessment at the end of the lesson. During the self-assessment, the students will identify other essential skills they feel they have demonstrated.
This year with KS3, we participated in ‘Trash to Treasure’ Challenge. Teaching staff planned for the challenge using the available resources and creating their own to meet the needs of all the students. All throughout the project, staff referred to the specific skills and highlighted when and how the students were demonstrating these skills during each task. For example, one student demonstrated great leadership skills when they took charge of allocating jobs in their group to create parts of their toy prototype. Each member of the group was clear about their role.
Bring it to life
During vocational learning and work experience, staff encourage the students to recognise what skill they are practicing in each task, reflecting on how they have used specific skills and how well they have performed. Staff will provide verbal feedback referring to the Skills Builder framework.
What's next
We will continue to assess the students termly and explore ways that we can target specific skill steps. We are exploring different ways to evidence the progress the students are making such as staff witness statements and skill builder pupil evaluations. We will continue to use the Skills Builder self-assessment stickers which have been trialled with KS3 and extend to KS4. In relation to the challenge days/weeks, these will be timetabled throughout the year, and we will invite industry in to provide support for the students with more real-life experiences. . It will be important to ensure that KS3 and KS4 engage with the challenge days/weeks and understand their significance.
