New Horizons Academy Provision and Offer
Introduction
At New Horizons, we aim to understand and meet both the personal and learning needs of all pupils, enabling them to develop socially and emotionally, and to engage positively in learning, through building positive relationships and equipping children for the next stage in their learning, whether that is a mainstream school or a special school.
Our intent at New Horizons is to provide a nurturing and engaging learning environment that supports the holistic development of all pupils. We build strong, positive relationships to equip children with the skills and confidence needed for a successful transition to their next educational placement, mainstream or special.
Curriculum Statement
Intent
Every pupil who joins our school has had a unique educational experience, which has not been successful. After a robust assessment process, we create a bespoke curriculum to meet their unique needs and prepare them for transition.
The tailored learning experience for our pupils is critical as we cannot allow our pupils to feel that they have failed again: it is our role to ensure that this does not happen. . Our highly trained and skilled staff work together as a team to provide engaging and stimulated learning experiences within positive, small, nurturing and stabilising learning environments to support pupils to be motivated and successful in their learning. Alongside supporting pupil’s individual academic needs, their bespoke curriculums also looks to address their complex social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs. Effective baseline assessments enable us to pinpoint the key areas of need and put in the appropriate interventions and support. Our graduated approach begins with the class teacher who gets to know every single child in their class, their parents/carers, and their individual strengths and challenges.
Our curriculum is designed to be flexible, personalised so pupils are enabled to progress to the next stage on their educational journey. We understand the importance of fostering confidence and independence in children, especially those who may find aspects of their learning harder than others; this is important for all learning and further life skills. Our aim is to provide a curriculum that enables each child to shine: to nurture their individual talents and raise aspirations.
The core principles of our curriculum are to:
-
Re-engage all pupils as learners
-
Enhance the self-perception of pupils as learners
-
Inspire and motivate pupils, fostering a curiosity to learn
-
Enable all pupils to make progress from their individual starting points and to have success in learning
-
focus on developing pupils’ social development, emotional wellbeing and mental health
-
Allow pupils to explore subjects beyond the core curriculum in a thematic approach
-
Have a strong curriculum focus on the facilitating subjects of English, Reading and Mathematics
-
Support all pupils to lead healthy and safe lifestyles
-
Support all pupils to develop the skills, behaviours and attitudes that will enable them to reintegrate to and be successful in the next phase of their education
Implementation
Our pupils come from a range of different schools , having experienced different curriculums before joining us, and may return or move on to another school with a different curriculum. Our classrooms may have mixed ages of children, many of whom are not working at age related expectations. It is therefore crucially important that our curriculum is flexible enough to enable us to meet a range of needs.
Each pupil who enters will be assessed on entry. Pupils complete baseline assessments, allowing staff to develop a personalised curriculum that fills gaps they have in prior learning, and allows them to move at their own pace, whatever their starting point. Our assessment cycle then allows for children’s progress to be tracked and carefully monitored, allowing pupils’ learning to evolve inline with their needs. Children are able to experience engaging and regular lessons of Science, PSHE and Computing which are based upon key, foundational content from the National Curriculum. In addition, using the National Curriculum as a starting point, we operate a rolling programme of thematic learning with different topics being taught each half term with other foundation subjects and, where appropriate, core subjects taught within this.
Impact
The primary measures of the impact of our curriculum will be student attendance, engagement, achievement and attainment. Our assessment policy contains the details of how we assess pupils. We will evaluate the impact of our curriculum in the following ways:
