At Duffryn High School literacy and key skills never work in isolation; they are incorporated into every level of the curriculum to enable all our students to own and achieve high standards of learning.

In the last three years, prior to the new key skills qualification, we have successfully introduced an innovative key skills curriculum for pupils from key stages 3 to 5. This provides all our students with unique learning opportunities to develop key skills of communication, application of number and ICT. We also incorporate the wider key skills of improving individual learning and performance, problem solving and working with others. Skills are integrated into modules of work. Students are tested on key skills elements of schemes of work as well as on their knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. For example, geography students collate and construct information in the form of spreadsheets and graphs when undertaking a sampling task in fieldwork. They use a variety of programmes such as Excel, Word and the Internet. In this way standards of achievement are constantly analysed and enhanced.

Key skills provide students with vital tools to improve their learning capacity across the whole curriculum and support their personal development. They are invaluable in empowering students to raise their self-esteem and confidence. This in turn improves levels of achievement at each key stage.

Both literacy and key skills are integral to the school development. The school literacy coordinator carried out an internal audit of all departments and as a result developed challenging literacy improvements to enhance the learning capabilities and literacy attainment of all students. Areas of development include the purchase of more user-friendly textbooks, production of appropriate worksheets and a more inspiring use of the classroom environment which incorporates key skills references and promotes literacy attainment at appropriate national curriculum levels. Improvements within the classroom environment include the valuable word displays at eye level, posters that reinforce content of literature and useful tips which help to avoid common literacy mistakes such as spelling, punctuation and grammar.

A fundamental part of our literacy initiative, is a highly successful Buddy Reading Scheme that pairs Year 12 with Year 7 students as reading partners. The results have been fantastic as reading ages, on average, advance at least two years in an eight-month period.

The Buddy Reading Scheme constantly reinforces the joy of reading for everyone in the school community and particularly boys -we discriminate positively towards boys when purchasing books. The knock-on effects from the Buddy Reading Scheme have been as positive for key skills as they have been for the development of literacy across the school. Year 12 students benefit from the scheme as they are able to accredit their training, fulfil Duke of Edinburgh Award criteria and achieve a wide variety of key skills in the areas of communication and ICT. The ICT element has been particularly well developed with Year 12 implementing new teaching and learning strategies through the ICT system. Year 12 produce spelling and reading games for Year 7 based on skills learned in their training for the Buddy Scheme. Year 7 delight in being able to access these thus enhancing their ICT skills as well as their literacy.

Duffryn High School is a truly comprehensive school serving a community of 1,340 students. We have a very positive vision of all our students walking along the Duffryn road to success through their school career. Giving priority to key skills and literacy ensures that all students maximise their potential in all areas of the curriculum.
 

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