FUTURE TALENTED Spring Term 2019 - Issue 2 | Page 27

EMPLOYABILITY
Bring it to life
Ensure children and young people see the relevance
of these skills by linking them with the real world and by
bringing real-life problems and challenges to work on.
Things to consider:
Are the skills framed in terms of their usefulness for
education, employment or entrepreneurship?
Keep practising
Skills building should capitalise
on a young person’s previous learning
and skills attainment. It should allow
dedicated time to build the
skills explicitly.
Things to consider: Things to consider:
PRINCIPLE 6: BRING IT TO LIFE
One key school priority is to promote
STEM careers. For example, Year 10
students worked alongside
employees from Exterion Media to
explore how they use essential skills
in their roles before applying the
same skills to an industry-related
challenge. To help students
understand the relevance of skills
beyond their school setting, the
careers team is keen to build essential
skills reflections into all interactions
with employers.
THE SKILLS BUILDER PARTNERSHIP
The Skills Builder Partnership brings
together more than 500 organisations
towards a common mission, joined by
shared language, principles and
outcomes. www.skillsbuilder.org
 o you make time to focus
D
explicitly on teaching essential skills?
Are there regular opportunities
for young people to use their
essential skills and are these
signposted clearly?
Benchmarks. A dedicated staff
member in each department is
assigned to oversee lesson-time
integration.
Focus tightly
To accelerate progress in the
essential skills, they should be used and
reinforced as often as possible –
whenever you have the chance with
the young people concerned.
QUICK
• There is a growing consensus around
what is meant by ‘essential employability
skills’, which is captured by the
Skills Builder Framework.
• Increasing numbers of schools are using
this framework in line with six principles,
to teach essential skills explicitly.
• Hornsey School for Girls is an example of
one school embedding the six principles
into teaching.
FUTURE TALENT // 27