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Toft Hill Primary School is a small, nurturing school located in a rural village on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland. While we serve the immediate village community, our pupils also travel from a range of surrounding towns and villages, creating a mixed catchment area. Our context is unique: though the community is close-knit and supportive, the rural setting presents limited access to local amenities and fewer opportunities for children to engage with a broad range of experiences.
We joined the Skills Builder Partnership because we recognised the value of explicitly teaching essential skills such as teamwork, leadership, listening, and problem-solving—skills that children in our setting may not always have the chance to develop fully through everyday life. Our pupils come from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds, and although most families are in employment, opportunities to build these crucial life and workplace skills can be uneven.
Our school is proud of its inclusive ethos, and we support all learners, including those with SEND, to thrive. Embedding the Skills Builder framework has provided a clear, structured way for all children to understand and practise the skills they need to succeed both now and in the future. These skills are especially important for our pupils as they grow up in a rural community with limited cultural and professional exposure. By prioritising skills development, we are equipping our pupils with the confidence, resilience, and communication skills they need to contribute to their communities and access future opportunities beyond their immediate environment.
Skills Builder supports our wider curriculum aims around Diversity, Equality and Inclusion, and helps ensure all pupils are prepared for life beyond primary school—empowered, capable, and ready to thrive.
Overall impact
The Skills Builder Accelerator programme has had a significant and positive impact on our whole school community. For pupils, it has greatly enhanced our personal development offer by giving all children—from Early Years to Year 6—structured and consistent opportunities to develop the essential skills they need to succeed both now and in later life. Pupils are increasingly able to identify and articulate the skills they are developing, and they understand how these skills link to their learning, relationships, and future aspirations.
For staff, the programme has provided a clear, progressive framework and high-quality resources that have supported the effective and confident teaching of essential skills. The Skills Builder Universal Framework has brought consistency across the school, ensuring that skills are being taught in a coherent, age-appropriate way. Staff value the clarity and structure it brings and now regularly make links to the skills across the wider curriculum and in extra-curricular activities. The programme has also supported professional development, with training sessions and staff meetings focused on assessment and planning using the Hub.
One particular highlight was our whole-school Challenge Day, Crash Landing, where pupils worked collaboratively across year groups to solve a real-life scenario. The level of engagement, problem solving, teamwork, and communication on display was great and demonstrated the impact of our focused teaching across the year. Pupils were motivated, confident, and proud to apply the skills they had learned in a creative and practical context.
The wider community has also benefited, with parents more aware of the essential skills through ClassDojo updates and celebration assemblies. Our visitors and external partners now reference our essential skills focus, and this has strengthened our wider curriculum and enrichment offer.
Overall, the Skills Builder Accelerator programme has become an integral part of our school culture and continues to positively shape teaching, learning, and personal development.
Keep it simple
At Toft Hill Primary School, we have embedded the Skills Builder best practice principles through a consistent, whole-school approach. Each Monday, we hold a dedicated assembly to introduce and explore the essential skill focus for the half term, helping pupils understand its importance and application. Every class has a timetabled 25-minute session each week to explicitly teach and practise that skill using the Universal Framework, ensuring progression across year groups.
To reinforce consistency, we have visible displays in every classroom and in the school hall that reference the current focus skill and associated vocabulary. We have also aligned the Skills Builder programme with our existing Gem powers, which promote values such as resilience and problem-solving, helping children to make meaningful links between familiar concepts and new language.
Pupils earn ClassDojo points for demonstrating skills, and this is tracked to help us understand which skills are being recognised and rewarded most frequently. Celebration assemblies often include certificate awards linked to specific Skills Builder steps, further reinforcing the value we place on essential skills development. Communication with parents through ClassDojo ensures families are informed and can support their children’s development at home, strengthening the home-school partnership around skills for life.
Start early, keep going
We are committed to starting early and keeping the development of essential skills consistent throughout a child’s time with us. All pupils from Year 1 to Year 6 have a dedicated, timetabled 25-minute session each week to explicitly focus on building essential skills through the Skills Builder programme. These sessions are carefully planned to ensure progression and appropriate challenge for each age group, allowing all learners to build and revisit skills over time.
To ensure our youngest learners are also introduced to essential skills, all pupils, including those in Early Years, attend our whole-school Skills Builder assemblies. These weekly assemblies introduce and explore the focus skill for the half term using engaging, age-appropriate language and examples. This early exposure helps EYFS children begin to recognise and understand the importance of skills such as listening, teamwork, and staying positive.
Our celebration assemblies, which include all pupils, often highlight and reward progress in essential skills. This promotes their value across the school and provides Early Years children with clear, positive models of skill use.
Parents are kept informed through ClassDojo, where we share updates on the skills being taught and celebrated. This strengthens home-school links and encourages parents to reinforce essential skills beyond the classroom.
Measure it
We use a range of approaches to measure the development of essential skills and ensure all pupils are making progress. Teachers make effective use of the Skills Builder Hub’s Benchmark Tool to identify the correct starting point for each skill, ensuring that teaching is tailored and targeted. Regular assessment is embedded into our practice, allowing staff to track progress over time and adapt their input to meet the evolving needs of learners.
To support consistency and confidence in assessment, dedicated staff meeting time has been allocated to explore the Assessment Hub in depth and allow for moderation across year groups. This collaborative approach ensures a shared understanding of progression through the Skills Builder steps and promotes high-quality teaching and feedback.
We also gather pupil voice regularly to understand how children perceive their learning and development in essential skills. This feedback helps us evaluate the impact of our teaching and adjust our approach where needed.
For pupils with additional needs, individual tracking is carried out through the Hub, allowing teachers to monitor small steps of progress and provide personalised support. This focus on measurement ensures we are continuously improving our practice and enabling every pupil to build the essential skills they need to thrive.
Focus tightly
we focus tightly on building essential skills through regular, direct instruction. Every class has a dedicated, timetabled session each Monday specifically for Skills Builder, ensuring consistency across the school. These sessions are an integral part of our weekly routine and provide pupils with structured opportunities to develop essential skills in a progressive and focused way.
We have mapped out the teaching of each essential skill across the academic year, dedicating a half term to each one. This allows teachers and pupils to explore each skill in depth, using clear, age-appropriate language from the Skills Builder Universal Framework. While the focus remains on one skill at a time, opportunities are regularly built in to revisit and reinforce previously taught skills through "flashback" activities, helping pupils to make connections and deepen their understanding.
To support teaching, staff have mainly used the short lesson resources from the Skills Builder Resource Hub. These ready-to-use materials provide a clear structure and allow teachers to deliver high-quality, engaging lessons that are aligned with the relevant skill steps. This focused approach ensures pupils receive regular, high-quality instruction and meaningful practice, enabling them to build essential skills systematically over time and apply them confidently in different contexts.
Keep practising
We ensure pupils have regular and varied opportunities to practise their essential skills across the curriculum and beyond. Teachers are now confident in identifying and referencing specific skills and steps from the Skills Builder Universal Framework in a range of lessons. For example, in English, before a Readers’ Theatre session, staff will refer to the relevant Speaking step, helping pupils understand how to apply and develop their communication skills in context. This approach enables pupils to make meaningful connections between skill development and their everyday learning.
We are currently working on mapping essential skill opportunities across the wider curriculum to ensure consistent, planned coverage and to further embed skills into all areas of teaching. Teachers are encouraged to reflect on where essential skills naturally fit within their subject areas and make these links explicit to pupils.
In addition, extra-curricular activities such as sports, wraparound care, and after-school clubs are valuable platforms for further skill practice. Staff running these activities use the language of the framework to help pupils reflect on and improve their use of skills such as teamwork, leadership, and staying positive.
To maintain consistency with external providers and visitors, we have developed an external crib sheet outlining our essential skills approach, ensuring everyone who works with our pupils shares a common language and understanding.
Bring it to life
At Toft Hill Primary School, we are committed to helping pupils see the real-world value of essential skills by bringing them to life through meaningful experiences. Our work with the Skills Builder programme complements our participation in the Start Small, Dream Big initiative, through which we actively track pupils’ aspirations for the future. This helps us to shape opportunities that connect classroom learning with the wider world.
We have welcomed a range of professionals into school to speak to pupils about their careers and the essential skills required in their roles. For example, a sports journalist and a Northumbrian Water engineer both shared how skills like speaking, problem solving, and teamwork are vital in their day-to-day work. These visits help pupils understand how the skills they’re developing now will support their future success.
We also benefit from strong links with The Auckland Project and Durham University, whose workshops and outreach sessions further reinforce the importance of essential skills in education and employment.
To apply skills in a practical context, pupils across the school took part in a Skills Builder Challenge Day—Crash Landing—where they used all eight essential skills to solve a real-life scenario. Year 6 pupils also completed Be Awesome, Go Big transition work, which is closely linked to preparing for secondary school through essential skills development.
What's next
Following the success of the SkillsBuilder Accelerator programme, our next steps focus on further embedding and sustaining our essential skills provision across the whole school. A key priority is to complete the full mapping of opportunities to link essential skills across all areas of the curriculum. This will ensure that every subject has clearly identified skill-building opportunities, making it easier for teachers to make consistent, purposeful links within their everyday teaching.
We are also working to ensure that all curriculum documentation reflects our essential skills focus. By clearly outlining where and how each skill is developed within subjects, we aim to provide clarity and support for all staff, particularly those new to the school. This will help maintain a whole-school approach and ensure that the teaching of essential skills continues to be embedded and progressive.
