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Mill Green School is a community special school catering to learners aged 14 to 19. Rooted in the core values of respect, inclusion, and empowerment, the school provides a dedicated, supportive environment focused heavily on life skills and preparing learners for a fulfilling adulthood.
Following a successful pilot last year, the school’s overarching goal is to scale the programme to a whole-school initiative. By embedding the language of the Universal Framework across the entire curriculum, all learners will receive deliberate and intentional opportunities to build, practice, and articulate their essential skills.
Overall impact
As a result of the partnership, Mill Green has successfully established an inclusive and individualised skills-based curriculum that is responsive to the diverse starting points of all its learners. We now share a common, consistent language that is used daily by both staff and students across the school.
For our learners, the framework has boosted self-awareness, enabling them to reflect on and articulate their skill development with concrete examples. This has enhanced their self-esteem and readiness for their bright futures. By deliberately connecting the framework to real-world career pathways, our learners can clearly see how the essential skills they practise in school translate into the workplace and independent adulthood.
Keep it simple
Mill Green School has successfully established a highly visible, whole-school culture centered around the essential skills. A formal Skills Builder policy has been introduced, and the essential skills have been mapped across the entire Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) curriculum. To reinforce this shared language, skill icons and posters are prominently displayed across the school, including on digital display screens at the main entrance, while targeted Skills Builder assemblies are delivered during form time.
A collaborative teaching culture has been established through regular briefings that equip staff with specific focus skills and tailored teaching strategies, leading to the language of the framework being integrated effectively into daily lessons. Recognition is a core feature of the programme at Mill Green; teachers routinely provide verbal praise during class and share "WOW skill moments" more widely
Start early, keep going
We have scaled the programme across the entire school, reaching 150 students.
Because the essential skills have been embedded into the core Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) curriculum, every year group is directly involved with the Skills Builder framework. This ensures that all learners are provided with consistent and explicit opportunities to build and practise their essential skills in a supportive environment tailored to their individual pathways.
Measure it
We have developed self-assessment tracking tools to capture progress and enable our learners to see their strengths and areas for improvement. Specialised, adapted Skill Passports are used, for example, across the Nurture Group, providing a structured framework that empowers students to actively self-assess, reflect upon, and articulate their own skill development.
Furthermore, plans are underway to use the framework to support EHCP target setting, with the SENCO trained to use the definitive skill steps as part of the EHCP outcomes. This will be built on more fully next year as the school deepens its formative assessment practices.
Focus tightly
Mill Green Learners benefit from the direct teaching of essential skills through their dedicated Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) curriculum. Lessons are grounded in real-life tasks (like enterprise projects, volunteering and cooking) and designed to explicitly model and practise each skill, step and building block.
To support high-quality planning and delivery, educators use Skills Builder Hub resources, integrating the Universal Framework, explicit skill icons, posters, and targeted starter activities into their daily classroom practice. To maintain a clear and manageable progression, the school structures its curriculum around a focused "one skill per half-term" model. For instance, the autumn term maintains a dedicated focus on Speaking and Listening, while the first half of the spring term prioritises Problem Solving.
Keep practising
Students at Mill Green School are provided with regular, structured opportunities to practise their essential skills across both the core Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) curriculum and the school’s enrichment experiences. To ensure a smooth transition beyond education, the framework has been mapped into the Leavers’ Careers programme, enabling older students to see the direct connection between classroom learning and future workplace success.
Bring it to life
Learners are offered meaningful opportunities to apply their essential skills in real-life contexts, with staff explicitly highlighting these moments as they occur. This deliberate application is also woven into formal milestones, such as using the framework's language during Year 14 Mock Interviews and Work Experience Days.
Enterprise and themed curriculum weeks enable us to further bring these skills to life. During Careers Week, the school successfully launched the ‘Start up Success’ Skills Builder Challenge Day. Learners then applied their essential skills across other projects organised throughout the week. Similarly, the Christmas Enrichment Week allowed students to apply their skills by creating and selling enterprise products.
What's next
Looking ahead to next year our focus will be on developing robust tracking systems by incorporating the skill steps into our new assessment platform. A key priority within this will be empowering our Teaching Assistants to contribute directly to these assessments to facilitate the holistic tracking of each student's developmental milestones.
Additionally, we intend to weave the framework into Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) target setting to align individual outcomes with essential skill progression, while mapping student achievements to reward systems like Class Dojo to strengthen the connection with home.
