School Life

The school day will offer consistency with familiar form tutors at the start and end of the day. The lengths of lessons vary between 40 and 80 minutes with double lessons in key academic subjects to reduced transition periods between lessons and the potential disruption concentration and heightened arousal levels that frequent changes bring. The afternoon offer has a focus on enriching activities and personalised off site opportunities.

Therapeutic interventions will be woven throughout the curriculum with scope for significant speech, language and occupational therapy interventions as part of daily Literacy and Communication sessions, in class observation and support and small focus groups to address small groups with similar needs.

The length of the compulsory school day is envisaged to be 9.00 to 15:00 with 5 hours of structured and guided learning each day.

A maximum group size of 10 will allow teachers to personalise lessons and differentiate effectively. In key stage 4, pupils will be gradually encouraged to participate in larger groups (of up to 20) for PE and resilience off site activities to enable pupils to experience larger cohort sizes in a safe and supported setting as part of post 16 transition planning.

Pupils will be supported to prepare for adulthood and engage with the local community, services and recreational facilities to increase confidence in social settings. This new school will work collaboratively with employers, sport and arts groups, training providers, Further Education and Higher Education providers and charities to enrich this aspect of the curriculum.

After school booster sessions will be pupils centred; highly personalised and can include collaborative parent/carer sessions to enable consistent approaches to developing literacy and communication skills at both school and home, whilst supporting and addressing literacy and communication skills gaps of parents/carers (and building trusting and positive relationships).

Mandatory Daily Literacy and Communication sessions and additional voluntary booster sessions will also ensure that the most able are stretched and challenged whilst encouraging a culture of reading enjoyment for all.