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Mill Green is a community special school in St Helens, providing education for students aged 14 to 19 with a wide range of complex needs, including autism, learning difficulties, communication challenges, and physical or sensory impairments. We are proud of our inclusive, person-centred approach and our strong emphasis on preparing every young person for life beyond school.
Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) is a core part of our curriculum across both Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5. It is structured around the four national PfA outcomes: Employment, Independent Living, Community Inclusion, and Health. Students follow highly personalised pathways that are linked to their EHCP outcomes and long-term aspirations. Learning is practical, functional and delivered through real-life experiences such as enterprise, travel training, and community engagement.
We joined the Skills Builder Accelerator because we recognised the need for a more consistent and measurable approach to developing essential skills like teamwork, communication, and resilience. While these skills have always been part of our curriculum, Skills Builder has given us a shared language, a clear progression model, and tools that empower both staff and students to recognise and build these vital skills for adulthood and employment.
Overall impact
It’s still early days, but the Skills Builder Accelerator has already had a positive impact across our school. While we haven’t yet fully embedded the essential skills into long-term planning, teachers are actively using the skills in lessons and referring to them more consistently. The shared language from the Universal Framework is helping staff support skill development more purposefully during classroom activities and real-life tasks.
For students, a key early success has been their increased awareness of what each skill means and how they can use those skills in everyday situations. We’ve seen students beginning to reflect on their strengths—for example, recognising when they’ve shown good teamwork or used listening skills during enterprise or group activities.
One of the biggest highlights so far has been our whole-school focus on one skill per term, which helped build consistency across classes and made it easier for both staff and students to engage. Another success has been introducing the framework to our Year 14 leavers, who have responded well to using essential skills as part of their transition preparation.
We’re excited to build on this progress next year as we begin embedding the skills more formally into our curriculum plans and use tools like the Skills Builder Passports to support tracking and reflection.
Keep it simple
We began by embedding the essential skills into the long-term plans for our Year 14/leavers group as part of the Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) curriculum. This is now being extended to all PfA plans across both Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 from September to ensure consistency throughout the school.
This term, we piloted a whole-school focus on one essential skill: Listening. All classes have explored this skill across lessons. From the autumn term, we will introduce a new skill each half term, allowing teachers to focus on one skill at a time across all subjects, helping students to understand, practise and reflect on that skill in a range of contexts.
We introduced the Skills Builder Universal Framework to all teaching staff and support staff during our first staff training session. The Framework has also been introduced to our provision for complex needs learners in The Hub. Teachers have started using the language of the essential skills in lessons, referring to posters and skill icons, and praising students when they demonstrate a particular skill.
These steps have helped us begin to build a shared, consistent language around skill development, and to show both staff and students that these essential skills are valued, taught, and celebrated in our setting.
Start early, keep going
We have started building essential skills from Key Stage 4, ensuring students are introduced to the Skills Builder Framework early in their Preparation for Adulthood journey. This continues into Key Stage 5, where the skills are embedded more deeply into long-term plans, especially for Year 14 and leavers.
This year, we piloted one focus skill per term across all classes — starting with Listening — and from September we will move to a new skill each half term. This approach allows all students, regardless of age or ability, to access, revisit, and build on each essential skill throughout their time with us.
Although we haven’t yet involved parents, this is a planned next step as we continue to embed the framework. We aim to share the language and purpose of Skills Builder with families so they can support skill development at home.
Measure it
At the moment, staff use observations during lessons and real-life activities (such as enterprise, work experience and PfA tasks) to identify when students are demonstrating key skills like teamwork, listening, and problem solving. Teachers are beginning to refer to the language of the Universal Framework when praising and discussing skills with students.
From September, we plan to introduce the Skills Builder Passports to support more consistent tracking across all KS5 classes. Our next round of teacher training will focus on how to use the Passports effectively to record progress and set meaningful skill-based goals.
These insights will help us to better understand each student’s strengths, identify next steps, and ensure progress in essential skills is visible and celebrated alongside academic and EHCP outcomes.
Focus tightly
Students build their essential skills through weekly Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) lessons, which are planned around the four PfA outcomes and now include a focused essential skill each half term. For example, recent sessions have included direct teaching of Listening through role play, group tasks, and guided discussions.
Teachers use Skills Builder resources, such as the Universal Framework, skill icons, posters and starter activities, to support planning and delivery. Lessons are designed to explicitly model and practise key behaviours linked to each skill, often linked to real-life tasks such as enterprise, volunteering, or cooking.
As we embed the framework further, we plan to introduce Skills Builder Passports to help guide and track skill development through more structured instruction and reflection.
Keep practising
Students have regular opportunities to practise essential skills through our Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) curriculum, which includes real-life learning experiences such as enterprise projects, café work, travel training, community visits, and independent living tasks like cooking and budgeting.
In addition, we encourage students to practise these skills across all subject areas, including English, maths, and option lessons like art or PE. For example, students might work on teamwork in PE, problem solving in maths, or speaking in group discussions in English.
Each half term focuses on one essential skill across the school, giving students time to develop that skill in a consistent and meaningful way. This cross-curricular approach helps students to apply the same skill in different contexts, which builds confidence and supports long-term development.
Bring it to life
We help students understand how essential skills apply beyond school by embedding them in real-life experiences and projects. This includes running a school café, taking part in enterprise activities, completing work experience placements, and participating in community visits such as shopping, using public transport, and volunteering.
During these activities, staff explicitly refer to the essential skills being used — for example, highlighting problem solving when a student adapts a recipe in cooking, or teamwork when they run the café together. We also use reflection activities to help students think about how these skills relate to future employment, independent living, and everyday challenges.
We are beginning to work more closely with external providers and employers, and we plan to build stronger links with supported internship providers to give students even more opportunities to apply their skills in real-life work settings.
What's next
Our next steps are focused on building momentum and strengthening consistency across school. One of our key goals is to develop a clear and meaningful way to assess progress in essential skills from Year 10 through to Year 14. We plan to use the Skills Builder Passports more formally and will provide further staff training to ensure confidence in using the Universal Framework for setting skill-based targets and tracking progression.
We are also planning to run a whole-school Skills Builder Challenge Day, giving students the opportunity to apply multiple essential skills in a fun, creative and real-world context. This will help embed the importance of the skills, bring them to life across departments, and encourage collaboration across different learner groups.
Over time, we will continue to embed the essential skills into our PfA curriculum plans and involve families more in recognising and supporting these skills at home and during transition.
