Skills Builder Handbook for Educators

Over the last decade, the Skills Builder approach has transformed the teaching of essential skills in education systems and classrooms across the world.

Essential skills like communication, collaboration, creative problem solving and self-management having long been called for.

New evidence shows that these skills unlock learning in the classroom, boosting academic outcomes, perseverance and self-belief. They halve the likelihood of being out of work, and increase earnings across a lifetime. They even boost wellbeing and life satisfaction. But access to these skills isn't fair. As educators, it can be difficult to go from knowing these skills matter to how to teach them in the classroom with real rigour.

Published in full for the first time, this Handbook helps any educator to use the Skills Builder approach with their learners - whether in primary school, secondary school, college or special school.

It starts by exploring how skills are built, and the key principles that make a difference. Principles that include being transparent about the steps to mastery, working across all ages, assessing skills robustly, directly teaching core tools and concepts, and then practicing them in lots of settings.

By breaking essential skills down into teachable steps, educators can dip in and out of this Handbook to assess, teach, and practice each skill step in turn for learners at all ages and stages. In doing so, educators can accelerate learners' mastery of these skills, and navigate them to success.