By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyse site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information.
Energy Coast UTC is a University Technical College located in Cumbria, UK, serving students aged 14–19 with a focus on STEM. Our mission is to bridge the gap between education and employment, preparing students for technical careers through a blend of academic study and hands-on, employer-led learning.
We use SkillsBuilder in explicitly taught employability sessions but also throughout our whole curriculum developing the essential skills in all subjects. We use it outside our curriculum with every project or employer-led challenge incorporating SkillsBuilder objectives, with students reflecting on the development of these skills.SkillsBuilder aligns with our vision of producing work ready people with the essential skills valued by our employer partners.
Overall impact
The Accelerator programme has had a strong, positive impact across the UTC. For students, it has made essential skills more visible and valued. They now have a clear understanding of what each skill means and how to improve it. By using it with our employer partners we have also expanded its reach and this will lead to greater outcomes for our students.
For teachers it provides a consistent structure and shared language of the essential skills into lessons and the corridors. Teaching staff like the format of it and how it then relates into real life. Our employers have engaged with our programmes and embedded the SkillsBuilder values into their projects and sessions. Two of our main partners were already running with the programme so integration was easy and as they are main career providers this was a logical progression.
The success of employer-led projects is an outstanding highlight, where students applied skills like leadership and creativity to solve real problems. Positive feedback from parents and employers, who’ve noticed students becoming more confident, capable, and work-ready.
Overall, the Accelerator programme has helped us raise the profile of essential skills and make them a core part of our culture and curriculum.
Keep it simple
We’ve made the SkillsBuilder essential skills a visible and regular part of school life. Posters and displays around the UTC show the eight essential skills. Teachers include them in lessons and refer to them during activities. Every single lesson starts off with a SkillsBuilder focus with an aim of how students may evidence it that lesson.
Students use the skills in projects and work experience, they are integrated within our awards system which you can see in the later uploads and they are celebrated each week during our rewards assemblies.
These skills are just as important as our academic grades, we want to develop well rounded individuals who are a credit to the workforce of the future. We have parent and employer sessions to in crease the awareness of the skills including an ‘egg challenge’ which is a challenge for our new intake with their parents before they start the UTC which is judged on the essential skills.
Start early, keep going
All year groups and classes have a developed curriculum for SkillsBuilder, each student has a ‘SkillsBuilder’ lesson every week which is a dedicated time for students to work on and practice specific skills led by employers and teachers. We prepare students for their interviews with their employers of the future by focusing on explaining where they have used a specific skill and giving them opportunities to use the skill in practice.
Parents are involved from the outset with specific sessions to engage them with the development of SkillsBuilder essential skills alongside an interactive session where they participate with their child and develop their own essential skills.
Measure it
All year groups map and collect data on their own essential skills. Our curriculum is mapped out that they all cover them in their 'SkillsBuilder' sessions, but we also integrate them into our employer projects and work experience. Students, teachers and employers are given a chance to rate each student at the end of each project to ensure there is a broad assessment of skills and feedback opportunities.
Alongside this our reward system is integrated with SkillBuilder which give us a good tracking of how the students are showing the essential skills over time. From this we celebrate success and create an action plan for students which we can share with parents so they can see that students are developing alongside their academic results.
Focus tightly
We have a dedicated timetable time for SkillsBuilder where students develop and practice each essential skill. These skills are delivered by teachers and employers with resources mapped from the hub and integrated within our own ‘employability’ lessons. By using employers, we are able to add further context and real-life examples and practical tasks. We build upon the skills in year 10 and then develop the context into year 11, 12 and 13. Giving further opportunities each time.
We use and adapt the booklets from the Hub to track and monitor the essential skills giving students a reference to reflect on when preparing for their interviews with employers.
Keep practising
We have a skill focus of the week which is displayed at the start of every lesson and linked to the learning of that lesson. Heads of department plan out the essential skills so that they are used and developed at target points throughout the year. We offer mock interviews, work experience and employer led projects where employers are asked to report back on the students essential skills.
Our T level placement surveys are reported using the essential skills and students are given specific areas of development over time. Each subject department develops an employer led project within their curriculum time and this is linked to two essential skills of their choosing, combining the essential skills with the Gatsby Benchmark 4.
Bring it to life
Students are able to develop and practice their essential skills in real life, practical environments, producing memorable examples for use in their future interviews. An example of this is real life challenges set by employers. All Students are set a brief and then work as a team to produce an outcome which is presented and assessed against the essential skills at the end of the project.
Our SkillsBuilder sessions link in the use of the essential skills with CV building, mock interview practice and letters of application. We provide students with the context to allow them to succeed in the next stage of their career.
What's next
For the coming years we will look to develop SkillBuilder in the classroom further by integrating more employer challenges. We will move to an online system which will enable use to track the data even more and develop our use of the benchmark tool.
