All students, including those identified as having special educational needs and disabilities have a common entitlement to a broad and balanced academic and social curriculum, which is accessible to them, and to be fully included in all aspects of school life.

At St George’s, we aim to provide and ensure quality teaching in the classroom with the need and requirement of differentiation and being adaptable being paramount. We offer further support to students through one to one interventions, specific styles of learning, and use of resources to remove barriers to learning. Our key focus is to raise and nurture the aspirations and expectations of all students with SEND.

When appropriate, we devise individualised learning programmes for our pupils. We also organise a framework of learning support within our mainstream classes in a number of subjects and for different age groups. Pupils with a variety of learning difficulties can make progress at their own rate, while at the same time increasing confidence in their ability to tackle a variety of subjects within the school curriculum.

Separate teaching of literacy and numeracy skills is provided for a few of our pupils by specialist teachers. Pupils are taught in groups which are deliberately kept as small as possible, given the resources available. The School also runs clubs for pupils who need to improve the standard of their work. Some of these are by invitation only. In addition, where appropriate, there are paired reading arrangements. We also invite some pupils to take part in a series of literacy skills lessons, which are taught in a series of intensive termly units.

Whatever help a particular pupil needs, we understand the importance of close liaison with parents in monitoring the progress of these pupils.

By all these means, we offer the opportunity for pupils of differing abilities to develop their own capabilities to the full – and ultimately we help them to make the most of the opportunities the school has to offer.

St George's School works under the government's Code of Practice for Special Educational Needs called ‘Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice: 0 to 25yrs’.

The school has a history of seeing education holistically where class teachers, house staff, parents and pupils work together to support a pupil's learning.

The key points of the new code are:

• Interventions need to be in place in a graduated manner.
• All teachers follow the principle of “quality first” teaching for all pupils.
• All interventions for a pupil's learning must follow the process of "assess, plan, do, review". For a pupil with special educational needs, this means that working with Learning Support, class teachers assess the pupil’s needs, plan the lesson, teach the lesson and then review the pupil's progress and learning outcomes.
• To support a pupil's education we run various clubs to improve elements of their learning.
• As a school we have access to a range of specialist advisory teachers. They support the school by delivering INSET to staff or suggesting strategies to support a particular pupil's learning needs.
• Our aim is for all pupils to achieve the best possible education and other outcomes.

The emotional wellbeing of staff and students at St George’s is considered to be very important.

Happy staff and students are usually more successful individuals, and that makes St George’s as a community a positive environment to be in.

The following pages offer information on how you can look after yourself and others emotionally, and where to access emotional support at the school.

Emotions are important in the classroom in two major ways:

• Firstly emotions have an impact on learning. They influence our ability to process information and to accurately understand what we encounter.
• Secondly learning how to manage feelings and relationships constitute a kind of ‘emotional intelligence’ that enables people to be successful. Some students may have difficulty learning because their minds are cluttered with distracting thoughts and feelings.

The Student's Services department, led by the Pastorial Support Manager and Mental Health lead, work to promote student wellbeing, support individual students with specific challenging circumstances and run emotional support groups.  Staff work to support the expertise of key pastoral leads in relation to the social, emotional, and mental health needs of students.

>Truth about self harm

>Self Injury Guidance

At St George’s we recognise that students are gifted in many different ways. A register could not possibly capture and recognise all of these and we have moved away from maintaining and communicating a Gifted and Talented register. We firmly believe that all members of our community should experience ‘stretch and challenge’ in their learning journey regardless of their starting point.

This challenge is not constrained to the classroom and academia, but is school wide and includes character and personality traits. Over 400 of our students participate in competitive sport – often on Saturday – and the programme of over 20 House events that form the Endeavour Cup provide opportunities to develop leadership, teamwork and resilience. St George’s is the biggest school in the South East for Duke of Edinburgh bronze award and Dragons Den competitions are open to all. We are continue to offer a huge array of residential and day trips.

Students recognised for their high academic attainment may be offered additional opportunities that include, but are not limited to;

• Crest Bronze Award Scheme
• HPQ and EPQ qualifications
• Visits to Universities including a Year 10 trip to Oxford University Visit
• More Able Mentoring
• Arkwright Scholarship.
• Bank of England Competitions
• UKMT Maths Challenges
• Physics Olympiad
• Chemistry Olympiad
• Careers in Languages Visit to Cambridge University.

"The objectives of the National Curriculum will be best supported in those schools which have a broad, balanced and up-to-date provision of library books and resource materials". DCSF 1989

We aim to:

• Support the curriculum by providing resources in all media at all levels of age and ability.
• Provide pupils with the necessary information skills to successfully utilise these resources.
• Promote the enjoyment of reading books through, fiction, non-fiction and current news platforms.
• Provide a pragmatic and successful use of Information and Communication Technology.

Resources

The Library has approximately 21,000 resource items, including popular fiction, non-fiction, biographies, reference books and four daily newspapers, more than twenty journals (many targeted to the GCSE and A Level syllabus).

Information Skills

All Year 7 pupils have Information/Library Skills lessons from the Librarians. The aim is to make all pupils at ease in the Library and able to undertake their own research, retrieving information and using it successfully as independent learners. There are also regular timetabled visits to the Library with their English teacher, with organised promotions to encourage a wide range of reading, such as the opportunity to shadow books short listed for the Carnegie Awards.

Information and Communication Technology

In the ICT Suite there are thirty networked computers available and 16 Ipads for student and staff use; all provide Internet access.  

The Library catalogue is available across the school network with all resources key worded for ease of information retrieval. Relevant articles in back copies of periodicals are indexed, to assist students with wider reading for subjects.