Curriculum
At Oakfield our fundamental principles surround the holistic value of each child. We believe that for our children to thrive and progress in a positive and vibrant manner they must feel safe, secure, and ready to learn. We provide nurturing classes that focus on the individual child and develop positive trusting relationships.
Once our children are settled and regulated within our school environment, we endeavour to provide creative experiences through a broad, varied and enriched curriculum tailored to their particular needs.
Our curriculum encompasses every planned learning experience the pupils have as a member of our school; both learnt formally within a lesson or informally outside the classroom throughout the whole school day. It is all the planned activities that we organise to promote learning, personal growth, and development. Teachers, support staff and therapists structure these experiences to ensure that they have the most positive effect on the attainment, progress, and personal development of all pupils. Our curriculum also incorporates the opportunistic learning experiences that occur throughout the day, and which staff pro-actively seek out and capitalise on in line with the autism-specific elements of our curriculum framework.
Our curriculum follows three pathways which are driven by the pupil’s needs and interests. These pathways have been informed by Development Matters, the National Curriculum and Autism Education Trust’s Pupil Progression Framework. Our curriculum is broad and varied and provides pupils with rich learning experiences that are highly personalized.
We are committed to core British Values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect for, and tolerance of, those with different faiths and beliefs, and through our PSHEE and RSE curriculum we actively promote our pupils’ understanding of and respect for a diverse range of people, especially those who belong to groups susceptible to discrimination.
As an Option Autism school our aim is that pupils make the maximum progress possible in the areas of difficulty typically associated with that diagnosis, including their social communication, emotional regulation, and sensory processing. Our curriculum also aims to ensure pupils can both sustain and generalise the skills they acquire, over time, and across different contexts and circumstances. Above all, our aim as a school is to ensure our pupils leave us with the highest possible levels of independence and autonomy, whether that be through the acquisition of practical and academic skills, regulation of their own sensory and emotional needs, or effective articulation of their own choices and pursuit of their own interests and life goals.
Structure of the School Day
The school opens to pupils at 9:00am, and pupils go home at 3:00pm (2:00pm on a Friday). The school day is carefully planned in each class, according to the needs of pupils and pathway that they are on. There are four main learning activities in each class, each day. These are augmented by several carefully planned and structured, shorter activities to support literacy, numeracy and personal development and pupils’ Personalised Learning Intentions.
Beyond the Classroom
At Oakfield we believe that every opportunity should be given to children to practice what they have learned in real life situations and settings. We have regular trips and encourage our children to take an active part in our local community.
Our beautiful grounds allow us to support this in a very strong way with Forest Schools and our own Scout Troop.
We work to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development considering how school can support the pupil and what targets they need to meet to achieve their goal. We have been using pupil voice to identify what aspects of school can be better for each pupil and develop plans to successfully enhance pupils’ experience in school.