Competences

Opening Minds features five categories of competences:

• Competences for Learning
• Competences for Citizenship
• Competences for Relating to People
• Competences for Managing Situations
• Competences for Managing Information

Each category contains a number of individual competences, which are expressed in terms of what a school student could achieve having progressed through the curriculum.

Competences for Learning

Students would:

• understand how to learn, taking account of their preferred learning styles, and understand the need to, and how to, manage their own learning throughout life.
• have learned, systematically, to think.
• have explored and reached an understanding of their own creative talents, and how best to make use of them.
• have learned to enjoy and love learning for its own sake and as part of understanding themselves.
• have achieved high standards in literacy, numeracy, and spatial understanding.
• have achieved high standards of competence in handling information and communications technology and understand the underlying processes.

Competences for Citizenship

Students would:

• have developed an understanding of ethics and values, how personal behaviour should be informed by these, and how to contribute to society.
• understand how society, government and business work, and the importance of active citizenship.
• understand cultural and community diversity, in both national and global contexts, and why these should be respected and valued.
• understand the social implications of technology.
• have developed an understanding of how to manage aspects of their own lives, and the techniques they might use to do so including managing their financial affairs.

Competences for Relating to People

Students would:

• understand how to relate to other people in varying contexts in which they might find themselves, including those where they manage, or are managed by, others; and how to get things done.
• understand how to operate in teams, and their own capacities for filling different team roles.
• understand how to develop other people, whether as peer or teacher.
• have developed a range of techniques for communicating by different means, and understand how and when to use them.
• have developed competence in managing personal and emotional relationships.
• understand, and be able to use, varying means of managing stress and conflict.

Competences for Managing Situations

Students would:

• understand the importance of managing their own time, and have developed preferred techniques for doing so.
• understand what is meant by managing change, and have developed a range of techniques for use in varying situations.
• understand the importance both of celebrating success and managing disappointment, and ways of handling these.
• understand what is meant by being entrepreneurial and initiative-taking, and how to develop capacities for these.
• understand how to manage risk and uncertainty, the wide range of contexts in which these will be encountered, and techniques for managing them.

Competences for Managing Information

Students would:

• have developed a range of techniques for accessing, evaluating and differentiating information and have learned how to analyse, synthesise and apply it.
• understand the importance of reflecting and applying critical judgement, and have learned how to do so.

Opening Minds at The Samworth Church Academy
What is Opening Minds?
The RSA