Belong School Gloucestershire SEN
Belong School Gloucestershire is an independent special school for students with an Education Health and Care Plan for Social Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs. Starting from the student, we combine high-quality teaching from subject specialists with a wide range of interventions to ensure that we give our students the best possible opportunities to learn, grow and thrive.
Whole-school relational approaches
Valued relationships
Our model of relational practice emphasises the value of strong, positive relationships as the foundation for growth and development
Restorative Ethos
We reinforce the importance of belonging and community through our whole-school commitment to restoring relationships when challenging behaviour results in harm
Trauma informed
Our trauma-informed approaches and structures are designed to both recognise and minimise the impact of adverse experiences and maximise engagement learning and progress
Solution focussed
We focus upon ways to overcome difficulties through building resilience and focussing upon solutions to challenges,
Built around individual needs
A student’s Education Health and Care Plan provides us with the starting point for developing each bespoke provision. A dedicated pastoral team works with each student and their family to craft a successful transition to full time education, acting as pastoral link, advocate and home-school liaison. A team of highly skilled learning coaches will be involved with the delivery of a student’s provision alongside our subject-specific teaching staff, providing a consistent and trusted group of adults from day one.
Student-centred provisions
Placing the student at the centre of the decisions about their learning doesn’t mean that ours is a school without boundaries or structures; it means that we are focussed upon the learning and development we want to achieve by working with our students. Our students frequently begin their time at our school after a number of episodes of challenge and difficulty at previous educational placements, often causing feelings of rejection and resentment. Our first mission is to build positive perceptions and attitudes through the hard work of our highly-dedicated and skilled staff team.
Our commitment to belonging is not limited to our work with students; a close, trusting and honest relationship with parents, carers and family serves to hold and maintain a student’s provision. We are in very regular contact using a range of forms of contact, so that we can best ensure that all can be involved in the student developments we are working towards as a community.
Specialist teaching for all
We provide a specialist learning environment that to the child feels and looks informal, but which is carefully and precisely crafted.
Each child has a bespoke curriculum consisting of our core offer (maths, English & usually science), and a selection of GCSE, vocational or accredited subjects alongside our bespoke Character Education curriculum, and a wide range of activities and experiences both on and off site.
Formal timetabled lessons take place for all students accessing on site, 1:1 in small groups, in the community or home based learning.
Interventions
In addition to our broad academic curriculum and character education curriculum, we offer a range of interventions, including both targeted responses to specific needs specific interventions to support the development of reading, literacy and maths and preventative interventions to support ongoing wellbeing.
As a school catering for students with Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs, our pastoral team plays a key role in developing and targeting our interventions. Our onsite outdoor space is used for Forest School and outdoor interventions, supporting students to develop resilience, self-confidence and emotional wellbeing. Additionally, we are able to offer a range of specialist interventions including boxing clever, enhanced physical education, and, where appropriate, we follow the advice and guidance of specialist therapists to deliver ongoing therapeutic support.
Find out more
At Belong School Gloucestershire, we provide a broad, balanced and relevant education for all children that is planned and sequenced around each student’s identified needs.
We ensure that our curriculum offer is flexible enough to meet the needs of the diverse population within the school and is carefully matched to the individual needs of each child. Our student’s provision is reviewed on a regular basis by the pastoral team in conjunction with students and parents.
We are committed to a highly flexible manner of working which supports students for whom English is an Additional Language. In line with our wrap-around approach to personalised teaching and learning, we will develop, monitor and review our approaches to supporting EAL students within the classroom and as part of the school and wider community. Where appropriate, this may include (but is not limited to) provision of additional language sessions to support the development of everyday fluency, the use of specific resources in a student’s native language and specialist training for key staff.
Read Belong School Gloucestershire’s policies
Find out about Belong School Gloucestershire’s Curriculum
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