Skills for life planner

The national agreement on raising standards and tackling workload

Workforce remodelling means a wider range of responsibilities for support staff and creates new career opportunities for existing staff and those looking to enter employment in schools. Identifying skills for life needs and addressing gaps will maximise staff’s effectiveness within their current roles and ensure a sound foundation for further learning and development.

Higher standards, better schools for all

The education white paper Higher standards, better schools for all puts parents at the centre of education. Support staff will therefore need the skills to engage with parents and carers sensitively and effectively, and to support groups and individual students across the ability range. The paper calls specifically for support staff to be “trained to a high level in literacy and numeracy”.

Every child matters

Every child matters: change for children explains how services should be built around the needs of children and young people in order to maximise opportunity and minimise risk. For schools, this means offering a range of extended services and working more closely with specialist services.

Delivering more integrated services will require new ways of working and effective communication across organisational and professional boundaries.  Developing literacy skills across the school workforce will help staff understand and meet these challenges. 

Every child matters also sets out a common core of skills and knowledge which covers the following areas:

• effective communication and engagement with children, young people, their families and carers
• child and young person development
• safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the child
• supporting transitions
• multi-agency working, and
• sharing information.

All six areas call for effective communication skills across the whole school workforce.

14-19 Education and skills white paper

The white paper emphasises that level 2 qualifications in English and mathematics are a vital part of a good education. These skills support learning in other subjects and enable participation in everyday life – including work. Support staff need good literacy and numeracy skills for all these reasons, and also so that they can provide support for pupils.

The companion white paper Getting on in business, getting on at work explains how the government plans to help more adults gain functional literacy, language and numeracy skills at level 2.