The World of Work Curriculum Throughout their education at Whaley Thorns Primary School we offer all our young learners the opportunity to develop the attitudes, skills and knowledge needed to be successful in their life as they progress beyond primary school through their learning journey and beyond into the World of Work.
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Intent

At Whaley Thorns Primary School, our World of Work curriculum is designed to support children to identify the seven key employability skills of:
1. Self motivation & adaptability
2. Problem Solving
3. Organisation
4. Teamwork
5. Numeracy
6. Negotiation
7. Communication
1. Self motivation & adaptability
2. Problem Solving
3. Organisation
4. Teamwork
5. Numeracy
6. Negotiation
7. Communication
- Further develop these seven key employability skills through business
- Further develop these seven key employability skills through business focused projects;
- Develop an understanding amongst our children and their families that the positive behaviours and attitudes of an individual are more important than their academic ability;
- Challenge stereotypes of any type – we can be anything we want to be!;
- Allow children to transfer the skills learnt in the classroom to real life contexts;
- Provide first-hand experience to facilitate learning in real-life situations;
- Allow children to develop their resilience and perseverance to empower them to respond positively to any challenge;
- Allow children to develop the interpersonal skills and language that they will need for life-long learning;
- Create the appropriate opportunities for our young learners to self-evaluate against the seven key employability skills for their future careers education.
Seven Key Employability Skills
Whaley Thorns Primary School is based in the village of Langwith, an economically isolated village with poor public transport networks. Employment is low and job opportunities are very limited for those families who are not able to drive further afield for higher skilled/higher wage jobs. Of those families where parents are employed, the roles are in low paid and unskilled in industries such as warehousing and distribution.
As educators, we consider that too many of our pupils under-achieve due to lack of aspiration within the community and the over use of convenient stereotyping such as “people in our family don’t go to university” or “I wasn’t very good at maths so my child won’t be”. Conversation with parents provide evidence of a clear lack of aspiration, employability skills and the intrinsic understanding that it is our attitudes, as well as our skills, that make us employable and economically viable. Our curriculum is designed to raise the aspirations of our children and to help them to believe that anything is possible. It is based on the principle that things may not always be a success at the first attempt and that mistakes and resilience will support our learning and improve ourselves and our ideas. The skills and talents of each child are recognised and celebrated whilst being underpinned by our RESPECT code to promote positive attitudes and behaviours. |
Implementation
Year 1 - 2021-2022
During this academic year, our World of Work Curriculum will take place each Friday afternoon across the whole school. Children will be taught in class groups.
Initially, children in each class will have the opportunity to be awarded with ‘employee of the month’ awards for their positive attitude and commitment shown towards their work. Children will be set performance based targets to work towards within their classes and rewarded for meeting them.
Rewards in the first year will be free (no cost) and activity based e.g. extra playtimes, provide legs within school etc. This is allowing for profit to be reinvested in projects in order for them to grow.
Year 2 Onwards - 2022-2023
In the second year of our World of Work Curriculum, children will be taught in mixed age groups, from Nursery to Year 6. Performance based targets and employee of the month awards continue to be offered whilst we will also consider financial rewards for classes based on performance towards targets. It is proposed that this funding will then be able to support the purchase of low cost items for the class that children would like e.g. toys, books, local trips/visits, etc.
Children will have the opportunity to apply to join three teams per year and to develop a breadth of skills with a transfer to another team over each term. Each team will be led by a member of staff.
Teams will include:
Projects
Children will have the opportunity to work as a member of a team on several different business-focused projects. The business project ideas will generally be spilt up into 3 different themes:
There will be 10 different strands to each project (see below):
During this academic year, our World of Work Curriculum will take place each Friday afternoon across the whole school. Children will be taught in class groups.
Initially, children in each class will have the opportunity to be awarded with ‘employee of the month’ awards for their positive attitude and commitment shown towards their work. Children will be set performance based targets to work towards within their classes and rewarded for meeting them.
Rewards in the first year will be free (no cost) and activity based e.g. extra playtimes, provide legs within school etc. This is allowing for profit to be reinvested in projects in order for them to grow.
Year 2 Onwards - 2022-2023
In the second year of our World of Work Curriculum, children will be taught in mixed age groups, from Nursery to Year 6. Performance based targets and employee of the month awards continue to be offered whilst we will also consider financial rewards for classes based on performance towards targets. It is proposed that this funding will then be able to support the purchase of low cost items for the class that children would like e.g. toys, books, local trips/visits, etc.
Children will have the opportunity to apply to join three teams per year and to develop a breadth of skills with a transfer to another team over each term. Each team will be led by a member of staff.
Teams will include:
- Marketing and branding
- Planning
- Communications
- Production
- Finance
- Community engagement
Projects
Children will have the opportunity to work as a member of a team on several different business-focused projects. The business project ideas will generally be spilt up into 3 different themes:
- A design Project
- A business start-up project, and
- an event/function/fundraiser project.
There will be 10 different strands to each project (see below):
Ideas are generated by the children through discussion and negotiation with projects being a mixture of long term and short term, regular/repeated projects and one-off projects.
All projects will seek to link up with other businesses to provide children with ‘real’ experience and also to enable some sustainability for projects whilst helping to get new projects off the ground. |
Impact
The Impact of our work will be measured in several ways:
- Pupil interviews – understanding of the seven employability skills, attitudes and behaviours
- Observations – engagement and participation in sessions, ideas, and application of the seven employability skills
- Parent interviews – to assess how attitudes and engagement is changing
- Engagement with local business – success stories, feedback and responses
- Ability to grow the projects and sustainability – finances, profit and planning