Key Stages 1 & 2:

• Listening to others
• Sharing ideas
• Valuing others
• Thinking skills
• Confidence
• Communication

Key Stages 3 & 4:

• Identifying and solving problems
• Developing creative and innovative solutions and ideas
• Effective team skills
• The impact of personal success versus team success
• Developing self confidence
• Comfortable learning from mistakes
• Respect for others
• Identify objectives that will lead to success
• Understanding what is 'personal success' to individuals.

MTa PASS is used by schools to support Inclusion in two ways:-

1) Direct support of “Inclusion” Students

• respect for self and others
• self confidence
• having an understanding of what 'success' means to them personally
• developing a rapport
• expressing their thoughts and ideas appropriately (so that others will listen way)
• listening to others
• taking time to think about and understand how to make good use of what others say.

2) To promote classroom understanding and promote the value of diversity

MTa PASS activities require collaborative working, where success is often achieved through understanding and making good use of the strengths of others. Similarly the tasks and subsequent review processes help students realise where they need to improve and help them find ways to develop the attitudes and behaviours they need to do well.

Realising the value of others' strengths provides a stepping stone into diversity. Once students understand, appreciate and value others and their potential, they can be encouraged to question their own attitudes and any prejudices they may have about students with whom they do not naturally relate.

The activities engage small groups of students in tasks which are followed by structured learning reviews. The task is the platform for learning, i.e. during the learning review the becomes the focus for analysis of performance and subsequent personal learning.

These learning reviews are the key to the whole process as they provide Gifted and Talented students with, under guidance, opportunities to dig deep into their own personal behaviours and those of others within their team. Typically the analysis begins with individual work followed by group discussions to develop understanding and conceptual learning. A follow on activity provides opportunities to implement and evaluate the learning in a training situation before developing strategies for improvement elsewhere.

In 2005 Lancaster University conducted an evaluation of MTa PASS when used with Gifted and Talented Students. Read their findings here.

Personal, social and health education (PSHE) deals with real life issues young people face as they grow up.

MTa PASS  offers teachers the materials needed to give students opportunities to develop the attitudes and skills that will enable them to become valuable and effective members of society.

Following involvement in short tasks, groups are guided through systematic review processes which help the students gain personal insights into each the qualities under discussion i.e

• mutual respect,
• self confidence,
• being assertive (rather than aggressive or passive)
• listening to and making good use of the ideas of others

The learning process is inherently flexible, so two or three students with different learning needs can learn very different lessons at the same time. e.g. as a result of a single discussion one student might learn to be less dominant, another to ask more questions, and a third the importance of expressing their own views to other people.

The 17 experiential activities within MTa PASS give students an opportunity to understand, evaluate, practice, demonstrate, develop and apply most elements of all five of these categories in a safe, structured and engaging environment.

The DfES propose that skills will be most effectively developed by pupils and staff through a number of measures. MTa PASS supports each of these in turn.;

• A whole-school approach to create the climate and conditions that implicitly promote the skills and allow these to be practised and consolidated;

• MTa PASS gives students the opportunity practise and apply skills that they will require throughout life.

• Direct and focused learning opportunities (during tutor time, across the curriculum, in focus groups and outside formal lessons);

• MTa PASS activities are focused on specific learning outcomes, yet the learning is experiential and student driven, providing an engaging contrast to formal lessons.

• Learning and teaching approaches that support pupils to learn social and emotional skills and consolidate those already learnt;

• All the activities within MTa PASS are focused on giving students the opportunity to understand the impact of personal attitudes (for self and others) and demonstrate, evaluate and practice inter-personal skills.

• Continuing professional development for the whole staff of a school.

• MTa PASS activities are derived from another MTa product, MTa Insights, which was designed to develop managers in business. Therefore many of the MTa PASS activities can be used successfully with adults.