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REACH School is a small Alternative Provision in South Birmingham for young people in Years 9–11. Many of our students come to us having had a difficult or disrupted experience of education, so our job is not only to help them achieve qualifications, but to prepare them properly for what comes next. That is where Skills Builder fits so well with what we are trying to do. ‘Employable’ is one of our five REACH values, and we want students to leave us able to recognise the skills they already have, understand what they need to develop and, importantly, be able to talk about these confidently. In January 2026, we made some significant changes to our Year 9 curriculum. Rather than waiting until Year 11 to focus heavily on employability and next steps in Pathways lessons, we wanted Essential Skills to be there from the beginning of their educational journey with us. Departments looked at the Skills Builder framework alongside the needs of our students and identified where particular skills could be explicitly taught and practised through their subjects. The Kings Heath Coffee project then gave us an opportunity to see this working in real life. Students worked with a local business on a genuine product, using skills they had been developing in school for an actual purpose and audience. That project has really shaped where we go next. From September, our new REACH Apiary and Business and Enterprise course will take the same idea much further, giving students the opportunity to develop a real enterprise over time while continuing to build the Essential Skills they will need beyond REACH.
Overall impact
The biggest impact has been that Essential Skills now feel much more connected to what we actually do at REACH, rather than being something that sits separately within Careers, Pathways and PSHE. The Year 9 curriculum work was a big part of this. Departments looked carefully at which skills naturally fitted their subjects and how they could teach and practise them. This gave us a much clearer starting point and meant students were hearing the same language in different lessons. The Kings Heath Coffee Project was probably the point where we really saw the value of this. Working with Kings Heath Coffee gave students something real to work towards. They had to come up with ideas on creative designs and wording, make decisions on marketing and branding, work together, communicate with people they did not necessarily know from business and the community, and present something to an actual audience. Suddenly, Creativity, Speaking, Teamwork, Problem Solving and Planning were not just words on a poster; students needed them to make the project work. For some of our students, particularly those who find new people and unfamiliar situations difficult, having that shared language also gave them something to fall back on. We could rehearse conversations, talk about which skills they would need and reflect afterwards on what had gone well. It has also changed our thinking about curriculum development. We know our students respond well when there is a real point to what they are doing. The success of the Kings Heath Coffee Project has directly influenced our plans for the REACH beekeeping apiary and our new Business and Enterprise core offer next year. Skills Builder is helping us join up curriculum, employability and real experiences rather than treating them as separate things.
Keep it simple
We have tried to keep Skills Builder straightforward by using the same eight Essential Skills across as much of school life as possible. Students see and hear the language in lessons, Careers, enrichment, Active Citizenship and experiences outside school. From the language on risk assessment planning for learning outside the classroom, to our rewards system, the Essential Skills are the framework. Our Year 9 curriculum work has made this more deliberate, with departments identifying particular skills that they will benchmark, teach and revisit through their subject. We also use the language with people outside REACH. Parents receive information about the skills and employers and visitors are introduced to them when they work with our students. On visits, students have used Skills Builder prompts to ask people about the skills they use in their jobs. This sounds simple, but for some of our students, approaching an unfamiliar adult and knowing what to ask can be a big step. Having a familiar starting point makes those conversations much more manageable. The Kings Heath Coffee Project was a good example of this working. Students could recognise that the Teamwork or Speaking they had talked about in school was exactly the same skill they needed when working with a local business or speaking to members of the community. What we have learned is that we do not need to make Essential Skills complicated. The important thing is that students hear the same language often enough, in enough different places, for it to become familiar and useful. We want them to be able to recognise a skill in school and then spot when they are using exactly the same skill somewhere completely different.
Start early, keep going
As an Alternative Provision, students can join us at different points and with very different experiences of education, so 'start early' for us really means starting as soon as a young person arrives at REACH. Our biggest development this year has been the redesign of our Year 9 curriculum. We did not want Essential Skills to suddenly become important in Year 11 when students are applying for college or going on work experience. Departments have therefore identified the skills their subjects are particularly well placed to develop and planned opportunities for students to practise them from Year 9 onwards. For example, English and History have a strong focus on Speaking and Listening, while Maths, Science, Art and Catering provide lots of opportunities for Creative Problem Solving. PE and Active Citizenship naturally lend themselves to Teamwork and Leadership. Our students do not all start at the same point, so we use assessment, self-reflection and, importantly, what staff know about each individual young person. Our small numbers mean we can be flexible and pitch things appropriately. As students move through REACH, we want the opportunities to become increasingly real. The Kings Heath Coffee Project allowed students to take skills from lessons and use them with a local business and community audience. For example, higher scoring ‘Creative’ students were paired with those who excelled in ‘Speaking’ to create the design and wording of the products to be pitched. Here joint collaboration in groupings helped to model higher skills. The next step is the apiary and Business and Enterprise course, where students will have more responsibility for developing and running an enterprise over time, from inception to selling. The aim is a clear journey: learn the skill, practise it in different places and then increasingly use it independently in situations that genuinely matter.
Measure it
We use assessment to help us understand where students are starting from and what they need next, rather than simply to produce another score. Students use Skills Builder Benchmark, but we also know that one method will not work for every learner at REACH. We have used paper-based activities, card sorts, discussion and self-assessment where these are more accessible. Staff observation is also important because, with our small cohorts, we know our students extremely well. As part of our Year 9 curriculum work, staff were shown how the Universal Framework and assessment information could be used to support planning. This helps teachers think about the right skill step for a student and can also inform groupings and roles. If one student is particularly strong in an area, for example, we can think carefully about how that strength might be used within collaborative work while another student develops a skill they find more difficult, such as in product design. We also want students to reflect after real experiences. Following projects, Active Citizenship or experiences of work, students can think about what they actually did rather than talking about a skill in the abstract. What went well? Which skill did they use? What would they do differently next time? Our next step is to make this cycle more consistent across the school: understand the starting point, identify the next step, teach it, give students opportunities to practise and apply it, and then look again at progress. For us, measuring Essential Skills only has value if we actually do something useful with what we find out.
Focus tightly
One thing we have become much clearer about is that putting a Skills Builder icon on a lesson does not mean we have actually taught the skill and that it has been mastered by the young person. Our Year 9 curriculum work has therefore focused on where subjects can directly teach particular Essential Skills. English and History develop Speaking and Listening; Maths, Science, Art and Catering provide opportunities for Creative Problem Solving; Life Skills and form time support self-management and planning; and PE and Active Citizenship have a strong focus on Teamwork and Leadership. The Universal Framework helps staff break these skills down into steps, rather than treating them as something students either can or cannot do. This is particularly useful at REACH because students of the same age can have very different starting points and levels of confidence. The important part is then giving students somewhere meaningful to use what they have learned. The Kings Heath Coffee Project did this brilliantly. Speaking mattered because students had real people to communicate with, from planning to marketing and selling. Teamwork mattered because they were working towards a shared outcome. Problem Solving mattered because there were genuine decisions to make about brand, design and wording of REACH Roast. That has probably been our biggest learning: naming a skill is not the same as teaching it. We need to show students what getting better looks like, give them time to practise and then create opportunities where they actually need to use the skill. Our apiary and Business and Enterprise project will give us the chance to do this over a much longer period, with Essential Skills taught and applied throughout a real enterprise journey.
Keep practising
We want students to understand that Essential Skills do not belong to one subject. The same skill can be needed in a History lesson, on a trip, during work experience or when trying to sell a product. Our Year 9 curriculum changes have helped us plan this more deliberately, but the Kings Heath Coffee Project was where students could really see it for themselves. Working with Kings Heath Coffee meant there was an actual reason to use the skills they had been developing. They needed Creativity to come up with ideas, Problem Solving to make decisions, Teamwork to get things done and Speaking to communicate with people outside their usual school environment. The project also involved families and members of our local community, so students had a genuine audience. For some of our SEND students, we used the Essential Skills language to prepare and rehearse beforehand, which helped make the experience feel more manageable and less intimidating. Students also practise their skills through enrichment, Active Citizenship, community projects and work experience. Our work with Lovell Partnerships is a good example. One student went into the placement thinking mainly about bricklaying but came away with a much broader understanding of the construction industry. The employer recognised his hard work, resilience, manners and punctuality: exactly the sort of skills and behaviours we want students to understand have value in the workplace. The Coffee Project has shown us that repeated practice is even more powerful when there is a real reason for it. The apiary will allow us to build that into a project that runs across the year rather than as a one-off experience. Our approach is that Essential Skills are built through repeated practice in different contexts. Whether students are solving a problem in a lesson, developing a product with a local business or working alongside professionals on a construction site, they are learning that the same Essential Skills travel with them, and that these skills have genuine value for life, learning and work.
Bring it to life
This is probably the part of Skills Builder that fits REACH best. Our students often learn most when there is a real person, product, purpose or outcome attached to what they are doing. The Kings Heath Coffee project was a really important example for us. Students worked with a local business and were involved in something that existed beyond the classroom. They had a real product (REACH Roast), real people to work with and a real audience. We shared the marketing with local schools (including their base schools) and parents and it sold out in 4 days! It allowed them to see why the skills they had been developing in school actually mattered. We have tried to create similar opportunities elsewhere. Students worked with community artist Maud Milton on a mosaic roundel for the new Kings Heath railway station directly opposite REACH. Their contribution will become part of a permanent piece of public art in their own community, which gives the project a genuine legacy. Work experience, including our partnership with Lovell Partnerships, has also given students opportunities to use their skills in professional settings and see how employers value them. The next stage is our REACH Apiary. From September, students will care for bees but, importantly, the project will go much further than beekeeping. They will develop products, think about branding, work out costs, market what they produce and hopefully sell to real customers. We want students to move from learning a skill, to practising it, to using it because they genuinely need it. When the outcome is real, the skills become real too, and that is what prepares our students for life beyond REACH.
What's next
The next step feels like a natural follow-on from everything we have learned this year. REACH Roast showed us how well our students respond when enterprise is real rather than hypothetical. They were not completing a worksheet about a made-up business; they were working with a local business, creating something and sharing it with a real audience. We now want to take that idea much further. From September 2026, our new REACH Apiary will sit at the heart of a Business and Enterprise project. Students will be involved in caring for the bees, but the bigger picture is the enterprise that can grow around them: honey and other bee-related products, branding, packaging, costing, marketing, social media and selling. This will link with our planned NCFE Level 1/2 Technical Award in Business and Enterprise and our work with The King's Trust Achieve programme, giving students the opportunity to gain recognised qualifications linked to business, employability and life skills. These are areas our students have told us they are interested in and they provide a meaningful pathway for learners who want something practical and relevant to their future. Essential Skills will be built into the project from the start. They will help us think about groupings, roles, individual targets and how students take increasing ownership. For me, the journey makes sense: we have adapted our Year 9 curriculum to put Essential Skills at the core; the Coffee Project showed students how those skills work in the real world; and the apiary is our chance to turn that into a sustained enterprise with qualifications, community links and something our students can genuinely be proud of.
