Skills for Work: Building a Growth Mindset
Building a growth mindset covers overcoming setbacks and building resilience, managing stress in the moment, the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset, and building helpful long term habits. It is one 20 hour Skills for Work unit that learners combine with other units into a Skills for Work, or Skills for Life and Work, Award, Certificate or Diploma. Literacy is the main cross-curricular skill: learners talk and write about their own setbacks and feelings, explain words such as resilience and habit, compare fixed and growth mindsets and reflect on strategies. Numeracy is only incidental, through tracking a habit over a week.
- Awarding body
- WJEC
- Level
- Entry Level 1 to Level 2
- Guided learning hours
- 20
- First taught
- September 2027
- Amount of literacy work
- Medium
- Amount of numeracy work
- Low
How this unit is assessed
- Entry Level (Entry 1, Entry 2, Entry 3): Four learning outcomes with assessment criteria at Entry 1, Entry 2 and Entry 3. Evidence is compiled into a portfolio, internally assessed by the centre and externally quality assured by WJEC. 20 guided learning hours, Skills for Work group.
- Level 1 and Level 2: Four learning outcomes with assessment criteria at Level 1 and Level 2. Evidence is compiled into a portfolio, internally assessed by the centre and externally quality assured by WJEC. 20 guided learning hours, Skills for Work group.
Skills that use Representing data
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Tracking a habit over a week
A suggested activity is to create a simple tracker for one habit, such as revising for ten minutes a day, and use it for a week, then reflect on progress. No assessment criterion asks for counting, measuring or calculating, and the specification maps no Numeracy to this unit, so this is the only numeracy and it is taught, not assessed.
Numeracy: Representing data, Interpreting data
Getting pupils ready
- Year 7
- Pupils use a tally chart to record each day they practise a habit for a week and count the total days.
- Year 8
- Pupils record the minutes they practise a skill each day for a week in a table, draw a bar chart and find the total and the mean.
- Year 9
- Pupils compare two weeks of habit data in a chart, work out the change in total minutes and decide whether the data shows the habit is becoming regular.
Show the specification wording and the LNF statements
Where it is in the specification: Suggested activities, pages 13 and 14
“create a simple tracker (paper or digital) for one habit”
Progression step 3
I can represent data using:
- lists, tally charts, tables, diagrams and frequency tables
- bar charts, grouped data charts, line graphs and conversion graphs
- pictograms where one symbol represents more than one unit using a key
- Venn and Carroll diagrams.
Progression step 4
I can draw conclusions from data and recognise that some conclusions may be misleading or uncertain.
Good to know
- Unit codes are S652E1, S652E2, S652E3, S652L1 and S652L2, and the unit is "GLH 20" in the Skills for Work suite (Unit overview, page 3).
- Appendix A of the specification ticks only Literacy among the cross-curricular and integral skills for this unit (page 29), so there is no Numeracy mapping.
- Evidence does not have to be long writing: "evidence may be verbal, written, practical or visual, extended written work is not required unless appropriate" (Sources of evidence, page 14), and teacher observation notes of discussions and role plays count.
- Spelling and layout are not judged unless a criterion asks: "Assessor judgements should focus on meeting the standard, not spelling or presentation unless specifically assessed." (Sources of evidence, page 14).
- The pack expects subject vocabulary: at Entry Level learners "will begin to use a range of discipline-specific vocabulary to express their answer" and at Level 1 and 2 they "will explain and give reasons for their answers" (Unit overview, page 4).
- Suggested assessment tasks are optional: "These tasks are not mandatory." Teachers may adapt them or write their own (Skills for Life and Work specification, section 4.1, page 18).
- AI tools must be acknowledged. Misuse includes "Copying or paraphrasing whole responses of AI-generated content" (Skills for Life and Work specification, section 4.6, page 21). Most criteria ask for personal description and reflection, which should be the learner's own.
Links with other qualifications
The pack names Fairness and inclusion in the workplace, Wellbeing and work, Personal development planning, Interview and confidence techniques and Overcoming barriers as Skills Suite units to deliver alongside it, and the Skills for Life unit Mental health and wellbeing covers stress and coping in more depth. Talking and writing about personal experience, feelings and opinions builds on the speaking, listening and reflective writing in GCSE English Language and Literature and, in Welsh, GCSE Core Cymraeg and GCSE Cymraeg Language and Literature. The work on stress and healthy habits links with the Health and well-being Area of Learning and Experience and so with GCSE Physical Education and Health.
Source: WJEC Building a growth mindset unit delivery and assessment pack, read with the WJEC Entry 1 to Level 2 Skills for Life and Skills for Work specification, approved by Qualifications Wales, teaching from September 2027 (© WJEC CBAC Ltd 2026).