Building essential skills with your learners can help you to work towards a number of Benchmarks, such as 5 and 6, and help to make your careers programme meaningful. For example, Skills Builder worked with the Career and Enterprise Company to embed essential skills into the Equalex outcomes and objectives framework for meaningful work experience.
Top tips from Skills Builder for ensuring your careers programme is meaningful
📚 1. Build your learners’ understanding. You can use our resources before an employer encounter or workplace experience to help learners understand the relevance and importance of essential skills. This sparks curiosity and leads to more meaningful experiences where they can focus on observing or developing specific skills.
Our Short Lessons, Careers Explorer tool, Career Challenges and Career Cards enable you to teach essential skills and show their real-world importance in the workplace.
📝 2. Support and prepare your employer partners. Brief employers to share concrete examples of how essential skills are used in their industry. Resources like our Mock Interview Pack help prepare all parties and facilitate meaningful two-way encounters. For workplace experiences, our Reflective Log gives employers a clear structure to provide specific, constructive and actionable feedback related to essential skills.
🪞 3. Embed reflection Building your learners’ understanding of essential skills will help them identify personal focus areas in employer encounters and workplace experiences. They can track their and reflect on their progress during a placement using the Reflective Log. After an employer encounter, Skill Passports provide a framework for reflection, enabling students to articulate what they have learned about applying these skills in a workplace context.
☑️ How do I get started?
- Set up a free Skills Builder Hub account to access the resources outlined above.
- Join our Digital Membership for school-level admin access to the Hub, plus access to Premium Resources.
- Apply for our flagship Accelerator programme from the spring term for a fully-funded year of support to embed an essential skills programme. You can find out more and download a prospectus here.
