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St Patrick’s College is a co-educational school for ages 11 to 18. St Patrick's College is committed to fostering the inherent dignity of each child and providing a quality education for all our young people. St Patrick’s College continues to transform to meet the changing needs of a multi-cultural and diverse society.
Our mission is to work as a school community in partnership with parents and our local community to inspire future generations.
The education and needs of our students are at the core of our daily work. Our mission serves to inspire and inform us, signposting our direction and providing a springboard for creativity.
Overall impact
The Accelerator programme has allowed students to develop their understanding of the importance of essential skills and also put them into practice in engaging ways through the lessons via the Hub and also via the projects. The projects in Year 8 and 9 have worked very well this year and the developments in these to include the launch and judging of the year 8 Breaking News project has raised the profile of the project. In Year 9, our local enterprise centre also sponsored a trophy for the Construction Counts project which has raised the profile of this project.
Keep it simple
The language of the skills has been embedded into the school culture with students and staff being very aware that we are a Skills Builder School. Skill logos are across the school, in classrooms, homework diaries and are visible in presentations at assemblies and career events. Essential skills are referenced in our Teaching & Learning and Assessment policies. Following our Formal Assessments, Skills Assemblies are hosted for all year groups to acknowledge skill development, alongside academic development from formal assessments. Student skill development is also acknowledged via our SIMS merit system for rewarding skills.
Start early, keep going
All students are given the opportunity to develop their essential skills through timetabled lessons, projects and thematic delivery. Skills have been embedded into the curriculum as follows. - Y8 : Double lesson on timetable - Y9 : 1 lesson per week - Y10: Skills delivered via Employability lessons, - Y11: Skills delivered via Careers and CV writing lessons - Y12: Skills delivered via Careers lessons and mock interviews- Y13: Skills delivered via Careers lessons and Big Idea- Y14: Skills delivered via Careers and UCAS prep.
Measure it
Most teachers benchmark the skills at the start of the topic, then teach the skill, completed the project and then re-benchmarked. This year, staff have also found the Stretch and support function beneficial on each skills to challenge more able learners and differentiate the teaching. In addition to the benchmark tool, we complete an end of year evaluation with all students where students highlight the skill they feel they have developed most. Some subjects also include skills regarding essential skills development in their end of year departmental student evaluations.
Focus tightly
As referenced above, student have Skills Builder, timetabled lessons or skills specific lessons in employability/ careers lessons. There is therefore explicit teaching delivered through a combination of projects, short lessons and explicit teaching opportunities.- Y10-Y13 use short lessons to explicitly learn about the skills before having opportunities to apply it.- Y8-9 learn about the skills using the projects. Skill steps are referenced on curriculum mapping and lesson planning.
Keep practising
The approach taken by St Patricks has been to embed the skills teaching into the yearly overviews and teach within relevant sessions, e.g. Careers for the older learners or via Projects for the younger learners. As all staff are highly familiar with the language of the skills, they are able to use it to support wider curriculum teaching especially with regard to project based learning and community links. For example: - Y9 English department worked with a local engineering company, which involved delivering presentations and referring back to their Speaking and Aiming High skills. Home Economics are able to reference and develop their creativity skills through product design work. Students have a range of opportunities to apply the skills via community links and projects. Pupil voice forms show that all key stages provide opportunities for learners to develop, practice and reflect on the skills they have used within the wider curriculum. Different departments are displaying the skill icons on their teaching slides and planning to signpost the skills reinforced during the lessons. Within schemes of work staff were mapping where they were doing the explicit teaching of essential skills. Some but not all of the curriculum plans will have the skills mapped. Our extra-curricular half termly calendar also includes the skills icons where relevant skills are identified skills being built in the clubs and goes out every half term.
Bring it to life
St Patrick's College continues to focus on developing relationships with local industry. Year 14 and 12 students completed mock interviews this year. Skills Builder materials helped students prepare for this. Year 13 students completed enrichment activities, one of which included a work experience module, that allowed students to complete a period of time each week in a work placement for a 10/ 12 week period. Students evaluated their essential skills development during this. Year 11 students also completed a visit to industry day in June, allowing them to develop an appreciation of the importance of essential skills in the working world. Throughout the year, all year groups had speakers from industry during themed weeks. During these talks, students had the opportunity to ask industry representatives about their views and uses of the essential skills. Students also linked with industry during the STEM Careers Fair and used the essential skills people bingo resource.
What's next
Moving forward, we would like to continue to embed Skills Builder across whole school practices, including the development of essential skills in our new School Development Plan. We would also like to focus more of the assessment of skills, ensuring teachers allocate time for re-assessing at the end of a project. We also hope to integrate People Hawk's AI tools to support data analysis on Benchmark next year. We also aim to continue to build staff knowledge of embedding the skills into wider curriculum lessons, e.g. where signposting to a particular skill step may support the curriculum lesson this could be recapped in the starter and reflected on at the end of a lesson or topic.
