Statement of Purpose
Core values drive our culture and are the foundations of our practice. We measure each decision against these standards.
OUR DNA
Values = Culture
R.I.S.E stands for:
• Respect:
The ability to be polite and understand that every individual deserves to be kept safe and listened to.
• Inspire:
The ability to withstand difficult situations, and produce positive outcomes.
• Support:
• Effort:
The characteristic of resilience and pursuing challenges without fearing failure.
By adhering to such values and creating a confident performing culture, we believe we are preparing young people for the next stage of their journey, whilst providing them with the opportunity to be respected citizens who positively contribute to society. Stafford Hall School intends to provide a safe and inclusive learning environment for all of its pupils, whereby their special educational needs are successfully met. It is important our pupils access a broad curriculum and leave school with the skills and qualifications required for future career aspirations and adulthood
Our overall aims include:
• Keeping students safe and secure
• Students having fun while developing their cultural understanding
• Students learning and supporting/inspiring others
• Students preparing for next steps
Our vision, ethos, and values
Stafford Hall School is in Halifax, Calderdale’s largest town, with stunning Victorian architecture and a strong industrial heritage. The school is surrounding by an exciting and inspiring garden space for young people to play, discover and relax in, while connecting with the great outdoors.
The school setting is especially nurturing, with its picturesque view of the rolling hills of Calderdale. Towering trees encapsulate the garden decorated with a mixture of flower beds and shrubs. The charming outdoors is used for learning within all subjects, including the pleasant polytunnel full of herbs and raised beds brimmed with root vegetables. Pupils are encouraged to explore the peaceful grounds which also include a giant outdoor swing, trim trail and trampoline.
Stafford Hall School can cater for 12 students with class sizes of no more than 4 students. Each class consists of a teacher and a teaching associate. Most young people at Stafford Hall School have experienced serious trauma and present complex needs in addition to being on the autistic spectrum. Therefore, it is imperative that the curriculum not only reflects the learning needs stipulated on the EHCP also pupil interest, sensory needs and regulation strategies.
Preparing young people for adulthood is key to planning, reviewing and evaluating the curriculum with destinations kept at the forefront of future decision-making. Pupils are provided with opportunities to receive information, advice and guidance, action plan, careers advice and work experience which will prepare them for future success in their next steps. They are supported to develop and discover their interests and talents.
The purpose of our school is revealed by the curriculum we provide, engaging and encouraging. We have high aspirations for our pupils and strive relentlessly to improve relationships between all those who work with young people to ensure they feel valued and safe. At Stafford Hall School, how staff treat pupils is viewed as crucial for cementing healthy relationships. We aim to listen with love, care with compassion and show an understanding of each young person.
Intent
Stafford Hall School aims to:
- Provide an ambitious, varied, and interesting curriculum which leads to pupil enjoyment and achievement.
- Deliver a curriculum content designed with the intent that all pupils can make progress.
- Ensure a coherent planned and sequenced curriculum which enables the development of sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment.
- Provide consistent education and support with a fully integrated and multi-disciplinary staff team.
- Extend the curriculum beyond the academic, ensuring pupils develop a wide range of transferable skills, such as tolerance; co-operation; respect; resilience; and determination.
- Offer a life-skills programme of study to further enhance the necessary skills for preparing for adulthood.
- Provide a personalised, positive environment using only proactive approaches.
- Ensure the school’s approach to teaching and learning enables access for all pupils, maintaining inclusivity throughout.
- Provide a Nurturing Curriculum based on the EYFS 2021 for those who are not yet ready to access learning within the National Curriculum.
- Monitor and record progress through a wide range of formative (Assessment for Learning /AfL) and summative assessments (Assessment of Learning /AoL).
- Offer externally accredited AQA Unit Award Scheme certificates, ASDAN award programme.
- Create an individual education plan (IEP) considering interests as well as learning needs to maintain interest and sustain motivation.
- Meet each pupil’s spiritual, emotional and physical needs.
- Ensure all pupils retain a sense of identity and belonging by providing them with a student voice within the personal development programme.
- Encourage pupils to be committed to their learning and take pride in their achievements by acknowledging and celebrating their achievements.
- Inspire pupils to have the confidence to undertake difficult tasks and to question things which prevent them developing into confident adults.
- Facilitate young people to see themselves as enquiring learners who help to build their own sense of their place within their educational world, articulating their feelings and justifying them.
Implementation
Stafford Hall implements the curriculum by:
- Adhering to a subject discipline long-term and short-term plan, which consistently follows the same format.
- Continually setting high expectations of subject knowledge from teachers, as well as up-to-date, quality assured planning, which makes learning effective for our students.
- Delivering quality first teaching with a good understanding of student needs and how best to meet these.
- Rigorous quality assurance measures of teaching and learning, including effective use of assessment, recording and monitoring, planned observations (half-termly), work scrutiny and planning files.
- Promoting a cyclical and sequential structure of planning, with a focus on helping to improve pupils working memory.
- Utilising the Early Years Framework 2021, National Curriculum and PHSE SEND framework to guide and inspire all subject planning.
- Applying the most appropriate positive teaching styles suited to each pupil, including the TEACCH (Teaching/Expanding/Appreciating/Collaborating/Cooperating and Holistic) approach recommended by the National Autistic Society.
- Working in collaboration with parents / advocates and placing authorities to ensure the highest standard of service is provided, at all times.
- Ensuring that parents can share fully in the life of the school, through regular communication, joint goal setting, planning, reporting, reviews and case conferences.
- Creating an ASD compliant learning environment in each classroom with access to quiet areas, welcoming, calm, purposeful and engaging for different students coming in each day.
- Sequencing of cross-curriculum links in long-term planning to enable the acquisition of knowledge and skills to be transferable and connections to be made within learning.
- Tracking pupil progress with links to learning objectives on a weekly basis.
- Providing weekly intervention for English, Maths and Science.
- Preparing young people for adulthood. Pupils are provided with opportunities to receive information, advice and guidance, action plan, careers advice and work experience which will prepare them for future success in their next steps. They are supported to develop and discover their interests and talents.
Assessment at Stafford Hall School is wide ranging. It is consistent and continuous throughout all subjects. Pupils receive a baseline assessment for English and Maths and are provided with a range of skill-based task for Art, Design and Technology, social story scenarios for Personal Development and scientific enquiry tasks for Science.
Formative assessment will include assessment for learning (AfL) techniques built into the lesson(s) to gauge understanding, adopt teaching and to promote and maximise learning. Strategies might include building on the baseline assessment, structured questioning, mini plenaries between activities, feedback and feed forwards.
Summative assessment will occur at the end of the ‘piece of learning’. Progress will be measured from the starting point, using a task for assessment of learning (AoL). This will be used to evidence progress and inform future teaching. Activities to demonstrate learning at the end of a series of lessons include: online assessment tasks, pupil presentations to the rest of the class or group (prompted/supported by an adult or peer if necessary), producing images/pictures/photographs of pupils’ work, or in a work book and audio recording of pupils’ work when they have demonstrated a particular skill or attribute.
Each term, assessments will be taken and tracked, which shows progression over time and the distanced travelled.
Impact
Whilst the curriculum is over-arching and ambitious, the complexities of ASD are considered inherently throughout all educational opportunities at Stafford Hall School.
The impact of the education at Stafford Hall School will:
- Enable young people to develop strategies paramount to the success of navigating their way through a complex world, adapting, and overcoming adversity and becoming a valued and productive member of society.
- Provide a platform for students to progress from in order that they may integrate into society, such as self-awareness, empathy, critical thinking, creative thinking, decision-making, problem solving, effective communication and interpersonal skills.
- Benefit all young people in their chosen career path so that they leave school with the understanding of how to live a safe and healthy lifestyle while additionally demonstrating their confidence to perform successfully in further education or the world of employment.
- Ensure students not only leave with a range of qualifications, but with instilled British Values and a positive ethos, which will allow them to be well respected citizens.
- Prepare young people to successfully transition into adulthood.
The purpose of education is to equip young people with the knowledge and skills that will enable them to better understand the world around them; prepare them for adult and working life; and to develop the cultural capital that will help remove barriers to achievement. Stafford Hall School achieves this by providing appropriate challenge and accredited opportunities, to all pupils so that they can grow to become confident, happy, positive adults in a world that can present challenges.
We aim to support pupils to develop their character: resilience, self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-knowledge. In addition, independence, knowing how to recognise and maintain positive relationships, have a healthy sense of self-worth and to keep physically and mentally healthy. We would like all our pupils to respect and celebrate the differences between people, and to question reasonably the position of others treating all with compassion and understanding.
At Stafford Hall School we encourage all pupils to be flexible thinkers and to become life-long learners always striving for growth and to become the best that they can be.
