Curriculum Intent

Curriculum Intent for Barley Lane 2024 – 2025:

At Barley Lane we strive to offer our students an adapted national curriculum that meets their individual needs, that interests them, offers them opportunities to succeed in adulthood whilst encouraging their curiosity about the world we live in. We want them to achieve their full potential and we know that previous school experience for our students are likely to be negative so we strive to ensure they experience the positives that school has to offer, through role modelling and our nationally recognised core values, through which we ask them to be 3 simple things – Ready, Respectful, Safe.

Our curriculum is designed to support pupils to:

Be as Ready as possible for adult life by having the knowledge and skills of a variety of topics, qualifications and social learning to begin to navigate adult life.
Embrace the diversity of life and be Respectful and embracing in all their actions and behaviours, relationships, and core values.
Develop their understanding how to keep themselves and others Safe through education, social acceptance, online safety and rule of law and to understand what healthy relationships, be they social or intimate should be.

We do this through a relational approach to working with our young people; building positive relationships with our students that are role-modelled amongst the adults. We understand that children need to feel safe before they can learn. Through our, ‘ready, respectful, safe’ approach, we achieve this; we ensure that our students are ready to learn making sure all of their basic needs are met, we model and teach them how to respect themselves and others which in turn makes them ready to learn.

In school we offer a range of subjects which include core learning in English, Maths, Science, ICT, PE & PSHE. In addition to these we also offer exciting and accessible vocational opportunities. We are aware that many children do not learn in a traditional classroom so have links with a local provider where students have access to courses in Construction, Barbering, Catering and Mechanics for our upper Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 students. We also offer additional courses in Animal Care and Catering onsite. We are keen for our students to take part in work experience in the local community in Key Stage 4, where possible, to give the experience of working in the real world, as well as the opportunity to discover where their future career interests may lie.

We want to offer all of our students intriguing experiences in their learning and where possible get them out into the local community to visit places such as the Zoo, the moors, the beach, and local environmental areas. We strive to offer as many learning experiences as possible to our students to engage them in the curriculum and their own learning. The experience our students gain through the Duke of Edinburgh award is priceless – many will never have camped out before, or cooked over a camping fire, or understand notions of self-reliance, leadership, teamwork and how to build resilience – and they really get a lot out of what we have to offer.

Our Key Stage 4 students leave Barley Lane with a variety of outcomes having accessed the knowledge and skills through our differentiated learning pathways which include GCSEs, Functional Skills, Entry Levels and B Techs. We want our students to be successful, independent adults beyond Barley Lane so we help them to develop their independent living skills to achieve this during their time at the school. We strive to ensure that once they leave us, our students are as prepared as possible for the next stage of their lives.