Curriculum

Pennine View at McAuley is a small designated KS3 SEMH provision for 12 pupils, for children that have been out of formal educational settings for a period of time or accessing alternative provision. The intention of the curriculum is to support children through attachment friendly and trauma informed practice, to understand students’ needs and create learning packages for them to support them re-integrate into a mainstream or specialist setting.

Children have identified SEMH needs and are working significantly below age related expectations and have significant barriers to learning. The intent of our curriculum is providing children with a calm, nurturing environment to enable them to feel accepted and safe enough to engage in formal education, to build self-esteem and resilience through personalised and adaptive learning strategies.

Through intensive interventions and specialist teaching we place high emphasis on understanding pupils emotional health and well-being and their academic needs. We aim to fill in the gaps in their skills, knowledge and understanding to support re-engagement. We promote a sense belonging and building resilience which enables pupils to understand their emotional own regulation and apply coping strategies.

We put a high focus on numeracy and literacy development as the cornerstones to the curriculum, and aim for all our pupils to make rapid progress in reading through specialist phonics intervention programs. We achieve this through robust baseline assessments and information gathering on entry along with engaging teaching based on building and establishing a relationship.

Most children will follow an aspirational curriculum based on KS3 subjects and expectations; they will have opportunity where appropriate to be taught alongside peers in subjects of their choice to support positive re-integration into the mainstream setting. We aim for our pupils to become independent and able to function in society. We equip them with broad and transferable knowledge and skills to enabling them to experience success in both academic and social development outcomes.