A collaborative approach to tracking achievement with a focus on skills in Alva Academy: Insights from young people and practitioners

With young people at the centre of this approach, it was important to gather their views and triangulate findings. At the beginning and end of the pilot, focus groups were held with young people. Feedback from focus group sessions was supported by information and quotations from young people which were captured throughout the process by practitioners. 

Feedback from young people was analysed and summarised into ten key recommendations:

1.     Make sure you use words we understand when you talk about skills

2.     Explain why skills matter

3.     Go into detail about what skills mean and why this is important for us

4.     Help us understand what skills we can develop through a specific activity

5.     It would be good to have reminders about skills so it’s in our minds more

6.     Make it fun and active – not just listening

7.     Give us more opportunities to talk about our skills with you

8.     Make sure you give us time to prepare if you are going to ask us questions or ask our views, so it isn’t a surprise when you do

9.     Conversations with our peers really help, just the chance to chat about what we think we have done well or improved on.

10.  We can help to run activities that would introduce skills to younger children so they understand what skills are, what skills they already have and why they matter

During the focus group sessions young people told us of the value of using a consistent, clear and understandable framework to discuss skills. Feedback from the young people on the language and format of the Youth Work Outcomes and Skills Framework was positive.  Young people said that having context and developing understanding of what a skills means, and looks like in practice, was helpful.

'Having the framework and the descriptions of different skills was really helpful.  Talking about these at the beginning helped me realise that we all have a different idea of what, for example ‘confidence’ is.  It was good to think about the different bits of each skill and that what matters changes at different times.' - Young Person

Young people told us that focusing on skills and skills development matters to them because they had opportunities to develop a deeper understanding of what skills mean and how they relate their experiences to skills development.

'It has helped me see what I have done and why it is important to me. It will help me explain why I was good in my volunteering and what skills I have because of it.' 

'It’s good for our futures as we need skills to get jobs and go into college and uni. We need to be able to talk about them.'

'It helped me with choosing my subjects as I knew what skills I am good it and I could pick subjects that needed those kind of skills.'

Young people told us that they appreciated and enjoyed having a range of methods to measuring their progress towards specific skills. Methods included voice recordings, pre and post questionnaires, discussions with peers and discussions with staff. 

'We had the chance to do voice recording about how we feel our skills have improved. This helped me think about it more and say what I felt. It was easier than writing things down.' 

'We also got a scale for the ‘I can’ statements. We got asked this at the start and the end and it helped me see how I had got better at something.' 

Different approaches work for different individuals. Some young people liked their own space to write down their reflections. Also, when young people struggled to capture their own evidence, observations and quality conversations proved essential in highlighting skills progress.

Why talking about skills works

Throughout the pilot young people told us that for them, talking about skills supported the development of a stronger understanding of the skills and their progress towards developing them.  Young people explained that talking, alongside other methods, supported their understanding of skills and told us that it took practice to feel more confident to talk about different skills and articulate what was changing for them.

It supports understanding:

'When you talk about it you have more chances to ask questions and discuss it. It helped me understand my own skills as my teacher could explain it to be better if I wasn't sure how I had got better at a skill.'

It supports critical thinking:

'It was good talking individually with the youth worker.  It made me really think.  But I liked talking about it in a group too – sometimes someone would say something that had changed for them, and I’d realise I’d got better at that thing too.'

 It supports detailed discussion:

'Speaking is better, you can say what you want without having to write, I can go into more detail when talking.'

Below are the collated views of practitioners who were involved within the pilot.

Successes

The Youth Work Skills and Outcomes Framework meets a clear need: All involved in the pilot recognised that there is a need to support and develop young people’s understanding of skills. It was recognised that the framework can support young people in feeling more confident to articulate their skills, strengths and areas for development. 

'The language of the National Youth Work Outcomes and Skills Framework is simple and accessible for young people – you can use it with any age group S1-S6' - Teacher

'The indicators are useful – they help everyone to understand what we mean when we talk about ‘confidence’ for example.' - Teacher

Developing confidence with a common language: Everyone agreed that there is great value in developing a common language that young people become familiar with across different learning settings – in school and in the community. It was clear that this common language supported practitioners (and young people) to develop confidence in using the terminology of skills:   

'The framework is made up of really accessible language – that’s why I’ve picked it up and I can use it colloquially. That’s why it’s become subconscious and felt really meaningful. It’s totally embedded in my teaching language now.' - Teacher

'Having a common language across the team was an important part of building confidence to talk about skills.' - Youth worker

Strength in partnership approach: Having ring-fenced time to come together as a multi-disciplinary practitioner group (youth workers and teachers) was really valuable in supporting a partnership approach, sharing learning and overcoming challenges together. 

'We don’t often get the opportunity to come together as colleagues (youth work and school) and learn from one another – that’s been valuable.' - Youth worker

This partnership approach gave young people the opportunity to identify and discuss their progress across the school community:

'Young people can see progress in school and out of school – it’s all part of their own development.' - Teacher

 'As young people become more familiar with the language of the framework, the depth and confidence of their reflections improves.' - Youth worker

Connections with Youth Awards: It was understood that youth awards are a useful tool to create opportunities for personal achievement for young people to develop and reflect on their skills. Although youth awards create ways for practitioners to work with young people to develop their skills they aren’t always necessary as the youth work approach does this naturally.

'For us as educators, it brings it home that it’s not just about achieving the award.' - Teacher

Challenges

Time: Time to build practitioner understanding of the skills framework is crucial, as is time to support high quality review conversations with young people and sometimes it is not easy to create this time in the school context.  Having time for skills discussions appeared to be a more natural part of an established rhythm of doing and reviewing youth work practice. Teachers reflected that supporting young people to achieve awards like Duke of Edinburgh depends on the delivery of prescribed content which makes it challenging to free up additional time to introduce the skills framework in a thorough manner.  

The challenge of time also relates to differences in overall group sizes and time spent with young people in school and youth work contexts.
 

'It’s important this isn’t tokenistic, and we don’t have the time we need to help young people make sense of the questions we’re asking [about skills].' - Teacher

It was recognised that supporting young people to discuss skills in small groups and peer to peer activities could possibly alleviate some of the time pressures.

'Individual / small group discussion works best, and this takes time – but taking short opportunities to do this over the course of the programme make it manageable.' - Youth worker

It’s a process – not a tick box exercise: When time is tight, there are risks that this process would turn into a tick box exercise. The richness of the process is in creating time for rich discussions, and the journey of supporting of young people to recognise and record their own skills development:

'We need to take care that reviewing progress does not become repetitive and boring for young people.  It’s important not to try to measure everything and to balance direct feedback from young people with our own observations.' - Youth worker

Creating a clear focus for reviewing progress is key. Capturing and reviewing progress can be tricky however the actual process is naturally happening in most situations:

'Doing the observations and have the conversations is one thing – but having the time to keep a record of them all is really difficult.  We want to focus on the moments for reflection – rather than spending time on recording evidence.' - Teacher

Opportunities

Building (everyone’s) confidence to have conversations about skills is an important first step. To support reflective learning conversations about skills, both teachers and youth workers highlighted the need to build confidence (their own and that of young people).

'School staff need to be trained and confident to deliver this. Nobody told us at uni how to teach skills.' - Teacher

Expertise in youth work practice and CLD methodology:  It was clear that youth workers bring confidence and experience in supporting these kinds of conversations and could help to build confidence across the school community.

'As relationships improve, the quality of the conversations [about skills development and next steps] improves' - Youth worker

'Nothing is standalone – learning doesn’t stop at the school gate either – skills are the common thread across settings in school and in the community.' - Teacher

Widening this approach: There could be an opportunity to widen this approach to other youth work and school partnerships with Clackmannanshire. The CLD team within the local authority would be best place to take a lead on this ambition, informed by learning from the pilot a high school and it’s community.