Curriculum Intent & Overview
Larwood School is fully committed to meeting its obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2014. All of our pupils have special educational needs related to their social, emotional, and mental health, and each has an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). Our curriculum is designed specifically to meet these needs. As part of our approach to curriculum design, implementation, and review, we:
Make adjustments for individual needs based on EHCPs and ongoing reviews.
Ensure all areas of the curriculum are accessible, regardless of the needs presented.
Adopt a highly differentiated and personalised approach to learning.
Adjust curriculum coverage in collaboration with parents, staff, and pupils (where possible) to maximise life chances, engagement, enjoyment, and self-esteem.
Provide time and support for additional arrangements specified in EHCPs.
Place strong emphasis on key skills through dedicated time for literacy, numeracy, science, and activities that promote physical health.
Ensure pupils have access to appropriate support and guidance in areas that prepare them for the next stage of life, including PSHE, careers education, financial education, and sex education.
Regularly review and challenge the breadth and content of the curriculum to ensure it evolves in response to changing needs, cohorts, and circumstances.
How We Designed Our Curriculum
Our curriculum is an ever-changing combination of events and activities that are designed to meet the needs of all of our learners, as well as prepare them for the next phase of their education. However, our curriculum is much more than this. We have designed our curriculum to take into the account the following:
For the vast majority of our pupils, their previous experiences of school, learning and the curriculum have all been quite negative. They have disengaged.
Our pupils all have an Educational Health Care Plan with social, emotional and mental health as their main presenting area of special needs.
We have a high proportion of pupils with diagnosis of ADHD, ASC and other challenges.
Our pupils (generally speaking) have great issues with subjects being taught in a traditional manner.
Our families have a wide range of needs and circumstances, but many have, or are experiencing deprivation, and a range of other challenging issues. Some of these are on a ‘day to day’ basis.
40% of our pupils had been at least two schools before Larwood.
Although all pupils have SEMH as their designated need, ASD ranged between 50% and 80% in different year groups, and those pupils with 2 or more identified needs within their statement ranged from 50% – 83%.
Our pupils are in desperate need of constant and appropriate relationships that guide, reward, motivate and inspire, alongside the setting of consistent boundaries.
We have designed our curriculum based on the factors above
and our current curriculum has the overarching intent to do the following:
To provide exciting, motivational and engaging experiences for pupils that enable rapid and sustained engagement. To get back to learning!
To offer deep learning experiences and a broad range of subject matter, adapting and creating bespoke learning opportunities when appropriate.
To ensure realistic learning situations whenever possible. For example, ‘Hands on Mondays’ and weekly ‘skills curriculum’, which are early preparation for future life situations, as well as making our curriculum as practical as possible where we can.
Ensure that we are equipping our pupils with key area development such as English, Maths, Science etc. However, this may be from the perspective of filling gaps, and providing catch-up due to our pupils’ previous educational history, as well as meeting their age-related needs and development where appropriate.
To support and challenge our pupils by intervening where appropriate in a timely and supportive manner that creates progression and growth.
To enable confidence, self-esteem, positive interaction with peers and adults and engender a love of learning for life.
Vision, Ambition and Expectations
Larwood School and its staff remain committed to providing the very best education for its pupils. Our school strapline of ‘achieve, believe, expect and enjoy’ permeates the school’s work and can be evidenced in many ways:
Assemblies make reference to the school strapline at regular intervals and in a variety of ways.
Dialogue between pupils and staff is used to reinforce and challenge pupils to meet this expectation in a way that is personalised to them.
Reports use the language of improvement and challenge.
We consider our school to be a leader in this type of provision within our county and beyond. We set challenging targets for achieving around 80% progress for our school cohort in the areas of reading, writing and mathematics. Research conducted by the Headteacher has shown that, although our school has been rated by Ofsted as ‘good’, our academic progression rates are on a par with other similar schools rated ‘outstanding’.
This drive applies to the creation, review and continuous adaptation of a curriculum for our pupils.
