The development of a skills-based curriculum built around student choice at Honywood School, Essex. This is an ongoing piece of work where I act as a facilitator and critical friend to a school based improvement group. The group have been tasked with updating the school approach to developing what have been known as the ‘Hony’ skills and making them more accessible to staff and students alike.

Whilst working in this area the group decided that there was a need to revisit the pedagogy needed to develop the skills and integrate meaningful levels of student choice. The map on the left gives a broad feel to how the skills will be positioned. It was agreed that the delivery mechanism would need to mature as the students did but would be based on two types of access. The first would be Personal Skills; these would be generic and used for Reviews, Reporting and Tutorials. The second would be Practical Skills and be subject-based with Progression built-in. The eight skills would be the same but the students would encounter them in different ways.