Tadley Horizon School Education
'The quality of the curriculum is outstanding. Teaching and assessment are good, meeting the full range of students' needs. After a short time at the school the majority of students make good progress and generally behave well. Personal development, including spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is good'. Ofsted 2007
Tadley Horizon's specialist educational needs policy references the DCSF document 'Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs'. At Tadley Horizon our aim is to raise standards in the education of young people with autism and help them to lead happy and fulfilling lives. Tadley Horizon adopts a multidisciplinary approach to education and care using the best practice from models such as TEACCH, PECS and active learning programmes. Pupils learn how to develop effective compensatory strategies to overcome their difficulties in social and emotional processing, communication and inflexibility in thinking and behaviour.
The design of the school, the structure of the educational programmes and residential areas, are created to achieve an autism-friendly environment. As individuals with an autistic spectrum disorder appear to suffer stress both as a direct and indirect consequence of their condition, social and sensory stimuli are minimised to help reduce this stress. Pupils also engage in high levels of physical activity throughout the day to help reduce excess energy and practice calming strategies to give focus.
Our teaching approach provides physical and visual opportunities for learning and helps pupils to achieve their full potential by understanding their limitations and making the most of their abilities. Managing expectations is a core part of the programme and we seek to promote self-confidence and self-esteem by building on pupils' strengths. Individual education plans (IEP's) are set for pupils and learning targets include strategies to reduce or eliminate behaviours which inhibit learning and social interaction by helping self-management of anxieties.
Educational curriculum
The core purpose of the curriculum is to promote pupil's basic skills in:
- Literacy and communication
- Numeracy
- Personal, social, health and citizenship education
The curriculum is designed to provide rich learning experiences that reflect pupils' needs, abilities and interests. During the school day pupils have access to the full National Curriculum. Teachers plan and teach in ways that enable pupils to achieve in all areas.
Subjects:
- Careers and work experience
- English and communication including developmental play
- Humanities: history, geography and religious education
- Information communications technology
- Life skills
- Mathematics
- Music, art, design and technology, food technology and drama as expressive arts
- Personal, social, health and citizenship education
- Physical education including outdoor pursuits
- Science
