Welcome from the Head of School
Welcome to The William Henry Smith School & Sixth Form, where our mission is to help every student reach their academic and social potential, ‘becoming the best they can be’.
As a specialist school, we are proud of our dedicated team, including expert teachers, dedicated support staff, experienced residential care professionals and specialist health and therapeutic practitioners.
Working as multidisciplinary team, we aim to create a nurturing and empowering environment tailored to each student’s unique needs.
We are committed to fostering both personal growth, resilience, self-esteem, and emotional intelligence whilst striving to achieve educational success.
Please explore our website to discover how we empower our students to thrive at The William Henry Smith School & Sixth Form.
Karl Adamski
Head of School
All our students come to us with a range of diagnoses, with prevalence around Social, Emotional and Mental Health needs and challenges, with co-existing conditions.
The needs of our students, including their barriers to learning, starting points, their contexts on arrival and experiences and feedback, are what shapes our curriculum design.
The special educational needs of our students are highlighted in their EHCP under the sections: Communication & Interaction; Cognition, Learning & Play; Sensory & Physical; Preparation for key transitions/independence/adulthood; and Health & Medical.
All our students have guaranteed unequivocal fair access to a rich, broad, balanced and experiential curriculum delivered across 24-hours of seamless learning opportunities.
Our curriculum is grounded in practice and research-based evidence and pedagogy, cemented in the belief and confidence that all students can learn and are capable, over time, of becoming happy, successful, self-fulfilling and contributing adults.
We know that our students come to us with different challenges and starting points, yet our core responsibility to them all is to: diminish learning barriers; increase knowledge; teach positive behaviour and enhance skills and understanding; build self-esteem, confidence, strength and resilience, character, and virtues.
Our broad, balanced, and ambitious offer provides an extensive range of opportunities to enable growth in personal development and academic accomplishment that is truly personalised. Through supportive relationships, trauma immersed practice, specialist support and careful scaffolding, we create a platform for engagement which leads to academic and social development, with an improved quality of life.
- Experience the outdoors as well as creative and expressive arts
- Know who they are, where they belong and how they can contribute positively to the school, their home community and society.
- Have respect for their own and others’ identity, views, rights, faiths and beliefs and the law
- Embrace diversity, and have the skills and values to help them contribute as a respected member of society
- Have the ability to reflect, explore and solve problems
- Develop the resilience to challenge themselves and the perseverance to bounce back from experiences and overcome barriers and previous experiences
- Have the skills to access further education, employment or training.
Core Aims
Our core aim is for every child to:
- Have a Quality of Life which illustrates their individual hopes, dreams, interests, skills, aspirations, independence and happiness
- Be a functional reader and writer; have an increasing vocabulary; have the capability to read for pleasure and to gain and provide information for life’s journey
- Have functional maths and computing skills
- Be able to recognise their strengths, have the confidence to try new things, visit different places, meet different people, have confident conversations and make sense of the world around them
- Know how to make safe choices and develop the skills to make better decisions independently
- Know how to build a sense of mental and physical health, well-being and happiness
- Know how to play, make friends and build and maintain healthy relationships and have the ability be able to transfer these skills into adulthood
Quality of Life
Improving Quality of Life (QoL) is embedded in our ethos and culture and is driven by our mantra of ‘becoming the best you can be’. Our Quality of Life work is underpinned by the belief that our students need to be happy, healthy and able to make decisions, which prepare them for adult life.
We use the Personal Development and QoL framework as a holistic approach to improving the QoL of our students, their families, and the wider community. Key Workers work in partnership with individual students, and families, to create areas for focus which may include learning a new skill or creating an experience.
A Seamless Learning Experience
The curriculum is delivered via an integrated approach from staff across all disciplines including residential care, teaching, learning support, family support, OT, SaLT and Psychotherapists and is scaffolded by extensive support services. Staff are experienced and appropriately trained and they ALL work on the principle that there are no limits to success.
Our curriculum is the totality of students’ experiences from KS1 through to KS4, and beyond for young people who reside and attend our Sixth Form in KS5. It is a 24-hour curriculum in its purest sense, providing students with teaching and learning experiences across a range of subjects and activities throughout the day and into the evening.
Learning is delivered in a sequential, progressive manner through each stage, at each point checking learning with recall and retention (using a multitude of methods) and developing learning over time. Whilst teachers understand the knowledge and skills to be gained at each stage, the curriculum and its delivery uses students' strengths to increase confidence, knowledge and understanding from individual starting points to ensure our students develop, consolidate and deepen understanding across all areas over time.
Subjects and curriculum areas include English, Maths, phonological awareness, Science, RSHE/PSHE, ICT, Outdoor Learning, Water confidence, Physical Development and Healthy Lifestyles, Construction, Hospitality and Catering, Duke of Edinburgh Award, Art, DT, Textiles, Music, History, and Careers.
Alongside academic qualifications, all our students have the opportunity to undertake a plethora of experiences such as bikeability, health and fitness, outdoor learning, and water confidence to name a few. This works alongside our ‘100 things to experience before you leave WHSS’ initiative, which aims to give all our students opportunities to explore and engage with the wonderful world around us.
Our students also undertake learning in areas such as first aid, food safety, online safety, British Values; achievement of the Bacc also considers student participation in our Quality of Life Curriculum, Therapy, Social Progress system, work experience, school jobs, volunteering and community work, participation in clubs and activities, and progress made towards their individual EHCP targets.
The WHSS Bacc is our bespoke school performance indicator that measures students’ success and attainment and for any students which stay in our post 16 provision based on a range of achievements, experiences, life-based skills, awards, and qualifications. Our bespoke WHSS Bacc recognises that a broad and balanced curriculum is vitally important to help all students fulfil their potential, whatever their educational needs and learning goals.
Experiences in residential care and after school, including evening activities, membership of clubs, trips, cultural/subject/topic and learning celebrations, outdoor learning weeks, weekends and holidays away have very clear and tangible links within the curriculum offer.
To make sure we reach all students needs and aspirations, some of our young people access bespoke learning and development packages and are supported off site at local education and skills providers. Students are encouraged to complete their passports to the future, participate in work experience and develop the skills for independence, further study and employability.
Holistic Assessment and Progress Monitoring
Assessment and monitoring progress plays a key part in identifying needs and using information to assess and address the suitability of delivery and the curriculum, therefore developing a holistic package of experiences and activities required to meet individual and group needs. A range of means, such as observation, questionnaires, QoL termly surveys, standardised and bespoke assessments, activity analysis and cross professional communication, best practice progress meetings, subject and topic celebrations, learning lunches, celebration assemblies and governance, ensures we track, amend and prioritise the curriculum and wider work with individuals, groups and families. Evidence for Learning play’s a crucial part in capturing our students' small steps of progress. This allows us to build of solid picture from our students’ baseline, demonstrating and evidencing their diverse range of skills of knowledge.
