Life skills, life competencies, 21st-century skills or the 4Cs.

Whatever the name, these are the essential abilities that help us to navigate the world - from communication to intercultural understanding and digital fluency.

There is not, however, a consistent understanding across the sector of the most effective ways for students to build these skills at school.

At International Schools Partnership (ISP), what we think matters most is for each student to have the opportunity to learn and develop life skills every day, in every lesson.

Rather than being treated as added extras, life skills should be continuously developed and reinforced through the curriculum itself.

Developing students’ life skills

Furthermore, our latest report, based on our research with the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange (Camtree), shows that when you do this, students can reap the benefits.

ISP’s life competencies model is informed by research from both McKinsey and Company and the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), among others.

It focuses on five key areas that we have identified to be most critical for student development - cognitive, digital, global, interpersonal and self-leadership.

Frontline insights

In our research with Camtree, 15 ISP schools focused on building these competencies alongside the existing academic learning objectives in lesson-based research studies across multiple subject areas.

At Tenby International School Setia EcoHill in Malaysia, for example, students grew their collaboration skills through poetry study.

Across three English literature lessons, the aim was for students to develop their ability to collaborate while also enhancing their understanding of the poetry texts. They did this by sharing diverse global perspectives and undertaking a complex literary analysis.

Teachers provided scaffolded support, including a checklist with team member roles and responsibilities. In subsequent lessons, scaffolding was removed, giving students more autonomy.

The research found that when students were simply asked to work together, collaboration was often unsuccessful or not effective.

However, when teacher support and explicit life competency modelling was added, it provided structure that allowed students to work more effectively, achieving success in the task at the same time as developing life skills.

It was a similar story at St Jude School in Costa Rica, where students who were preparing for International Baccalaureate (IB) applications developed time-management strategies and self-leadership skills with guidance from teachers.

In those studies, teachers provided explicit instruction on planning and prioritisation, and modelled the use of various tools such as agendas and goal-setting exercises.

Working towards these practical time-management strategies meant that almost all the students (14 out of 16) exceeded expectations in terms of their curriculum learning, while 15 out of 16 exceeded their goals relating to life competencies development.

What we learned

The key learnings informing our next steps are:

1. Life skills are not add-ons; they are an essential part of the learning experience that can help students fully engage with the curriculum.
    
2. Life skills need to be explicitly taught to ensure students understand what they are, how to develop them and how to apply them in different contexts.
    
3. Personalisation is key - some students need more structured support to develop life skills in the classroom.
    
4. Real-life relevance boosts motivation. Applying curriculum and competency learnings to real-world challenges can help students think critically.

Our priority now is ensuring that every student across our network is supported to build these skills most effectively inside and outside the classroom, regardless of their curriculum or language of study.

Benefiting every student

With such a diverse and global student community, the key to embedding our research findings is providing a framework, guided by best practice, that can be flexed and personalised for each school, subject and student.

Our framework guides all teachers by providing a rubric that shows how specific life skills can be observed in learners aged 4 to 18. Broken down by age and stage, it includes clear statements and examples that illustrate how these skills are developed over time.

In addition, all ISP colleagues have access to professional development courses about life competencies through our online learning platform, and life competencies leads are responsible for supporting the implementation of our framework across the whole school.

By making life skills a core part of students’ learning experience, we can ensure that young people develop future-proof skills to help them thrive in learning, in life and in the world of work.

Camilla Woodhouse is head of life competencies at International Schools Partnership