PIXL Edge Award
At Manningtree High School we want to do everything we can to support our students learning and personal growth. It is for this reason that we have launched PiXL Edge with our Year 7 students. The PiXL Edge is a framework to develop and accredit in students those personal attributes which are essential for employability and life, namely:
The aim for the PiXL Edge is to provide students with opportunities to develop themselves and gets them thinking about all sorts of different jobs and careers that they might not have considered before. More specifically, the PiXL Edge will enable students to create a portfolio of experiences that will help support their applications when applying for:
Sixth form Apprenticeship schemes University applications Full time employment
Students will set themselves targets and be encouraged to identify the LORIC skills that will help them succeed in this challenge. This will celebrate the ‘good’ that students are doing, or can do, outside of academic achievement. By developing these important characteristics students will also put themselves in a better position for future challenges: an opportunity to give them the EDGE.
Levels of challenge
Students have access to two levels of challenge here at Manningtree; Apprentice and Graduate. It is designed so that students start on the Apprentice level in Year 7 with most completing this by the end of Year 8. In Years 9 and 10 students will then have the opportunity to work towards the Graduate level.
For the Apprentice award, students need to complete a total of 10 targets over the two years (2 targets for each attribute). When students complete the qualification, they will be awarded their PiXL Edge certificate, a Manningtree ‘Extra Mile’ badge to wear with pride, plus an opportunity to progress onto the level 2 ‘Graduate’ award, which can be taken from the beginning of year 9, should they wish to do so. The completion of each level leads to a recognised, (unregulated) qualification.
This is an exciting opportunity for students to develop character, make themselves more attractive to further education providers and future employers, and will certainly help them to celebrate the successes that they are already achieving both in, and outside of school.
How to complete challenges
All Year 7 students have a logon and password for the Edge website. The website contains a database of challenges that can be searched by LORIC attribute, key word or subject. The database contains hundreds of challenges. If a suitable challenge cannot be found, students can speak to either their Edge Mentor or Mr Smalley to suggest a new challenge. New challenges can then be submitted to PiXL, and if approved, will appear on the database in a few working days.
Once a challenge is selected, students need to complete a short description of what they intend to do. Once the challenge is complete, they then need to complete a short reflection on how the activity helped them to develop the LORIC attribute, (e.g. Leadership).
If a student has forgotten their password or logon details, they should see either their Edge Mentor or Mr Smalley
Useful Resources
Below are some useful resources giving more information on the Edge and how to complete challenges.
