Curriculum

Our intention is to provide experiences that develop every aspect of a young person’s life, leading to the most independent and safe future possible. A curriculum for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities must include experiences that mainstream pupils can gain elsewhere: it must include opportunities for repetition and over-learning without becoming repetitive and tedious; it must include strategies for developing safe friendships and appropriate socialisation techniques; it must enable young people with physical disabilities to address physical and medical requirements whist maximising learning; it must include multiple opportunities to transfer school-based learning into wider situations and for these links to be maintained long after a pupil has left. A curriculum for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities must take account of multiple learning and communication styles, and the fact that what is learnt one day, may not be remembered the next.  A pupil starting Westfield School at age 3 may well spend the next 16 years here, so most importantly, the curriculum must be able to adapt and expand in a way that enables each pupil to adapt and expand too. The curriculum model must effectively create opportunities for students to achieve in core, foundation, and personal development areas, through distributed, proactive curriculum leadership and additional specialist input which allows for maximum personalisation throughout the setting. All of these principles remain of utmost priority within our curriculum design and development.