"The more we give importance to skill development, the more competent will be our youth."
- Narendra Modi
It has never been more important to build a set of essential skills to succeed in life for our children and young people: the ability to creatively solve problems, to self-manage, to communicate effectively, and to work well with others. These are skills that are needed to do almost anything well. The need for these skills is clear, but there is still a gap – too many children and young people do not build these skills to the level they need, and so miss out on opportunities to thrive in other parts of their lives.
What is Skills Builder?
Skills Builder is a rapidly growing partnership between schools and colleges, employers and organisations that aims to educate current and future generations on the 8 essential skills that underpin success in all areas of life from academic and career to relationships and self-confidence.
They believe that we need to equip young people with these fundamental skills to enable them to thrive now and in future endeavours, a belief that we echo here at Dale Hall.
Known by many different names, these eight skills map across to the four domains that come up time and again as the core, transferable skills for employment.
In pairs they cover communication, creative problem-solving, self-management, and collaboration skills.
These eight skills are laid out in the Skills Builder Universal Framework. The Framework breaks down each of the eight essential skills into tangible steps which can be developed in turn.
We can use it to clarify what success looks like in each skill and to map out the trajectory for growth. The full Framework can be found from page 7 (See PDF above) The Framework is the culmination of four years of learning and builds on the expertise of over 120 leading organisations and individuals across the sector.
How can we support at home?
Skills Builder has recently launched their Homezone - a free, fully resourced hub for parents and carers to access in order to support the teaching of the eight essential skills.
You can choose the level that you feel represents how confident your child is with the individual skills (younger children may be 'getting started' but older children may be 'intermediate') and the Homezone will provide informational videos for your reference, stories to share with your children and discussion points to follow, activities and projects to try as a family and lists of age-appropriate books that support your children with understanding these skills.
Please see the link below to access Homezone:
Miss Viki Killeen
Skills Builder lead
After a brief interlude for maternity leave, I am thrilled to be returning as the Skills Builder lead at Dale Hall. I am passionate about giving all of our children the best chance for success in all that they do and equipping them with the tools that they need to thrive in every area of their lives. My aim as Skills Builder lead is to develop the teaching, learning and resourcing of Skills Builder within Dale Hall so as best to support teachers, enthuse children and to develop life-ready learners.
What does Skills Builder look like at Dale Hall?
Every class at Dale Hall has one Skills Builder session timetabled in to their week whereby we explicitly teach, model and discuss an element of one of the eight essential skills. Teachers choose the skill level that they know is right for their class, ensuring the children can reflect on and discuss the skills in question within their sessions. Our classrooms foster an ethos that is based on developing independence within these skills and so our staff make sure to model these skills in all that they do as well as praise and encourage the children to demonstrate the skills outside of their designated sessions as well.
For any subject, teachers are continually assessing the children and their needs and this is no different for Skills Builder. Teachers decide which skill level needs addressing within their class and then use the progressive nature of the framework to ensure children are always moving forward within the skills.
From summer term, we envisage using Skills Builder challenge and project days to bring these skills to life. Children will be able to immerse themselves in a project that will challenge them to use these essential skills in order to be successful.