Benefits include
- Supporting pupils to develop skills, competencies and characteristics adequately to prepare them for survival and success in their future.
- Making children ‘future ready;’ we know that we cannot predict, with any degree of certainty, the knowledge and understanding our students will need in times to come. What we can predict however, are the skills and competencies they will require to succeed. Life cannot be well lived without skill.
- Preparing pupils to be global; skills and characteristics are internationally translatable, and transcend cultural barriers; knowledge sets don’t. For example, a young person needs to be creative in any country, in any language; they do not necessarily need to know about the development of Protestantism in Europe.
- Accessing an international curriculum. Any visions that have been developed of a what a future global education system might look like are based on systems of competencies and characteristics
- Focusing on actions. It will take our young people’s action to overcome the challenges, not passivity.
- we are going to have to train them to act; competencies are about learner agency; competencies are active
- competencies and characteristics are based on learner agency; agency implies a sense of, ‘responsibility to participate in the world and, in so doing, to influence people, events and circumstances for the better…’
- students will have to respond in ways that are genuinely and deeply collaborative; characteristics are understood by everyone, and exercised socially; they are the functions on which collaboration relies
- Preparing pupils for employment. The world of work is changing, and the economic climate is changing; employers are looking more and more for proven characteristics, skills and competencies than qualifications; employers state that for 75% of jobs in the UK filled by 16 – 23 year olds, skills, competencies and characteristics were more important factors determining whether the individual got the job or not, than qualifications
- WCSQM prepares students for a job market which is focused more and more on how the individuals present themselves in networking forums, in terms of skills and competencies
- Pupils find it difficult to articulate what their strengths are in terms of characteristics; this app gives them a framework to confidently explore their personality, and decide what their strengths are
- Every student engaging with the app is eligible to be nominated for WCSQM Student of the Month, as part of our Student Character Campaign to acknowledge and reward students publicly for their World Class characteristics.
- Research demonstrates that parents are most concerned with schools developing their children’s skills, competencies and characteristics so they can survive in the future, once they have left the school.
- Once a school has reached minimum student usage thresholds, they are eligible to apply to be WCSQM accredited, joining our network of UK and international World Class schools, and the many benefits and opportunities this brings.
