Our Curriculum

Our Curriculum Intent

 

At The White House School we are passionate, dedicated and aspirational for all of our pupils. We offer a specialist learning provision which emphasises the development of core academic understanding, encourages creativity, celebrates outdoor learning and promotes the growth of essential life skills, including mindfulness. Our dedicated academic focus is balanced with consistent and specialist pastoral and therapeutic support, in order to nurture pupils’ self-esteem, personal, social and emotional development. We are committed to each pupil’s holistic development for them to reach their true academic potential in preparation for their senior school setting.

Our curriculum has been designed to be able to offer an ambitious learning journey for pupils with a variety of special educational and behavioural needs. Fundamental British Values and our three school values are woven throughout the curriculum framework. We aim to develop our pupil’s shared understanding of cultural capital and intend to embed these essential life skills and experiences throughout the curriculum, in order to support academic and personal development progress.

Four department areas form the foundation of our curriculum, with these being; ‘Key Skills’, ‘Personal and Physical Development’, ‘Knowledge and Understanding of Our World’ and ‘Creative Enrichment’. Through subjects taught across these departments, we ensure that our pupils receive access to a linguistic, mathematical, scientific, technological, human and social, physical and aesthetic and creative education. Cross-curricular themes are used to scaffold learning against, providing opportunities for repetition of knowledge development across multiple subjects and consolidation of learning. Our curriculum is carefully sequenced, providing opportunities for pupils to revisit what they have previously learned, ensuring they know, remember and build upon key knowledge and skills across all subjects.

Our pupils join us at varying stages of their primary education journey. Our intention is to ensure each and every pupil understands their place in the world, to support them with self-regulation, communication and preparation for adulthood and life in a senior school setting. This is achieved through a holistic, mindful and academically ambitious approach.

Our curriculum has been designed with this, and our three core values, in mind. We offer a bespoke curriculum, which is academically ambitious, nurtures their personal development and provides them with a sense of community. It is highly tailored to meet the individual needs of our pupils. We place great emphasis on the subjects Life Skills and Mindfulness, with each having dedicated timetabled sessions. These subjects feature within our ‘Key Skills’ department, sitting alongside English and Mathematics as core subjects, such is the importance of the development of these skills for children with special educational and behavioural needs. The ability to be able to mindfully self-regulate, to be self-aware of their emotions and undertake essential life skills is an ambition we hold for each pupil, so that they enter their senior setting and, eventually adulthood, with a toolkit of social, emotional and communication strategies as well as a developed ‘sense of self’. Standalone Citizenship lessons are taught to help provide our pupils with the knowledge, skills and understanding required to prepare them for a full and active life in British society.

We offer two distinct curriculum pathways, depending on the needs of the child. Our Curiosity Curriculum follows the national curriculum and provides highly individualised learning for pupils working at, or slightly below, their age-related expectations. Our Discovery Curriculum is designed to place great emphasis on communication, as this is the most common barrier to learning for pupils in this class. However, we still adopt a formal and ambitious approach in this foundation stage, with pupils able to join Curiosity classes when appropriate.

In both pathways, we promote a love of reading, celebrate British Values and enhance the curriculum with an enriching personal development programme. We adopt a nurturing approach and offer a range of therapies for all pupils, as well as specialist support for pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs.

Our robust quality assurance, monitoring and review processes ensure our curriculum is always highly effective.