Communicate, Persevere, Achieve
To provide every student with the life skills they need to become independent and confident through each stage of their life’s journey.
Educational and Welfare Provision for students with EHC Plans and students for whom English is an Additional Language
Curriculum Statement
Our main aim is to provide a wide range of creative, fun, educational experiences and opportunities to enrich our students’ lives, promoting the highest possible academic achievement, developing independent life and social communication skills.
The Charlton Park Academy curriculum focuses on developing the key skills of communication, cognition, independence, physical development and self-care, all transferrable skills that equip children and young people for life beyond the school. Our curriculum has an emphasis on reading as it is essential that all children and young people read for pleasure and study subjects in the curriculum in preparation for adult life. Early reading is taught through synthetic phonics, coupled with core word reading until children and young people can decode automatically and confidently. In addition, reading comprehension strategies are taught to develop reading for meaning. Our librarian ensures that appropriate reading materials are available for all students to expand their vocabulary.
Our curriculum strives to be responsive to each learner’s needs, building on individual strengths and interests. It is skill and context-based and encourages active engagement in learning. Everything we do is through personalised learning and supports students as individuals, incorporating their individual needs, interests and ways of learning. Our curriculum is ambitious and designed in order to support the students in progression to college, employment, supported employment, independent or supported living and enable active participation and inclusion in community facilities such as gym, swimming, further education and the local offer.
Curriculum Intent
The curriculum is designed to enable all students at Charlton Park Academy to:
- persevere; to keep trying and not to give up.
- learn in a coherent and sequential way.
- build on prior knowledge and experiences ensuring that each component is relevant and progressive.
- have strategies to be able to communicate their needs, wants, opinions and thoughts
- be active learners.
- develop their social skills so that they can engage and interact with others meaningfully.
- develop skills for learning to channel their natural curiosity.
- develop their understanding of safety in the physical world and digital world.
- be active and to have a healthy lifestyle.
- access a clearly structured day with routines which they recognise and understand.
- develop motor control and physical independence.
- develop and uphold spiritual, moral, social, cultural and British values.
- make a positive contribution to community life.
- develop specialist knowledge and interest in a range of topics.
- develop skills that contribute to their autonomy and independence in a range of environments.
- transfer skills between home, school and community.
Curriculum Aims
At Charlton Park Academy we aim to provide every student with the life skills they need to become independent and confident learners through each stage of their life’s journey.
We aim to ensure that our students’ personal aspirations can be achieved as we support and equip them in preparation for adulthood, providing each student with the necessary skills to be able to successfully navigate their world.
We focus on developing skills in:
- Communication and interaction
- Staying safe
- Preparation and options for adult life and developing individual independence
- Cognition and learning
- Social and emotional, mental health and well-being
- Community participation and learning outside the classroom
- Physical and sensory development.
As our students develop within these skills, we recognise that what has been learned must be relevant to the young person and applicable to their wider world.
Opportunity will be provided for the functional application of these skills supporting transference into their homes, their community, work, and adult life.
We aim to ensure that through reflective and collaborative practice with parents/carers and specialist providers, the best possible outcomes for all students` are achieved.
Our carefully planned Curriculum Pathways will ensure this continual growth within the school environment and beyond.
Through our Curriculum Pathways we provide each student with a unique learning journey tailored to meet individual needs and stages of development, incorporating essential life skills and experiences whilst connecting with the wider community.
Our students are ‘enabled, celebrated and valued’ by a curriculum tailored to meet their needs through an ‘I can do’ attitude.
Our teaching and learning processes are designed to support students with a wide range of special education needs. Our approach is personalised to ensure that all students are central to the curriculum offer. This will differ for students with autism, profound and multiple learning difficulties, kinetic disorders, physical disabilities and cognitive impairment.
(Every child with a disability should enjoy the best possible life in society: UNICEF)
Our approach is personalised to ensure that all students are central to the curriculum offer.
Our carefully planned Curriculum Pathways will ensure this continual growth within the school environment and beyond.
SSAT Children’s Charter: A Pledge for Children
On Wednesday 26th April 2023 school leaders across all phases and settings, along with partners and organisations joined the online launch of the SSAT Children’s Charter: A Pledge for Children.
SSAT Chief Executive, Sue Williamson, welcomed Professor Barry Carpenter, and Matthew Carpenter, Principal of Baxter College who, together, shared the rationale and context behind the creation of the charter and what our children and young people need now: our response to a reshaped, redefined 21st century childhood.
SSAT, with Professor Barry Carpenter and Matthew Carpenter, led a seminar in December 2022 ‘Thinking about Children’; where leaders from secondary, primary, special schools and universities, together with partner organisations met to consider the daily lived reality of children and young people now, post pandemic, in order to shape the detail within the Children’s Charter.
We are delighted to be able to share our charter and those six principles with you now.
Individually, we all bring our unique experiences and expertise but together we are stronger.
British Values
The Department for Education state that there is a need “to create and enforce a clear and rigorous expectation on all schools to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.”
The government set out its definition of British values in the 2011 Prevent Strategy, and these values have been reiterated by the Prime Minister. At Charlton Park Academy, these values are reinforced regularly and in the following ways:
Democracy
Children and young people have many opportunities for their voices to be heard. We have a school council which meets regularly to discuss issues raised in class. The school council is able to genuinely affect change within the school. The council members for each year group are voted in by their class.
The Rule of Law
The importance of Laws, whether they be those that govern the class, the school, or the country, are consistently reinforced throughout regular school days, as well as when dealing with behaviour and through school assemblies. Students are taught the value and reasons behind laws, that they govern and protect us, the responsibilities that this involves and the consequences when laws are broken. Visits from authorities such as the Police and Fire Service help reinforce this message.
Individual Liberty
Within school, students are actively encouraged to make choices, knowing that they are in a safe and supportive environment. As a school we educate and provide boundaries for young students to make choices safety, through of provision of a safe environment and empowering education. Students are encouraged to know, understand and exercise their rights and personal freedoms and advise how to exercise these safely, for example through our online safety and PSHE lessons.
Whether it be through choice of challenge, of how they record, of participation in our numerous extra-curricular clubs and opportunities, students are given the freedom to make choices.
Mutual Respect
Our behaviour policy has revolves around values such as respect, and students have been part of discussions and assemblies related to what this means and how it is shown. Assemblies and PSHE lessons promote respect for others and this is reiterated through the work in the playground, classroom, learning skills and on the sports field, as well as our behaviour policy.
Students know that it is imperative that respect is shown to everyone, whatever differences we may have.
Tolerance of those of Different Faiths and Beliefs
Respect ensures tolerance of those who have different faiths and beliefs. This is achieved through enhancing students understanding of their place in a culturally diverse society and by giving them opportunities to experience such diversity. Discussions involving prejudices and prejudice-based bullying have been followed and supported by learning in RE and PSHE. Members of different faiths or religions are encouraged to share their knowledge to enhance learning within classes and the school, such as staff or parents leading school assemblies on their faith.
Beliefs, traditions and customs will be studied in depth across the curriculum, with visitors for varying faiths regularly being invited in to our school to enrich and extend understanding. Through this, our students gain an enhanced understanding of their place in a culturally diverse society. Trips that enrich and support tolerance of those of different faiths include; visiting the local synagogue, church and mosque where customs are explained and students had the opportunity to investigate religions different to their own.
