Ofsted February 2024
“The school provides pupils with an extensive range of enrichment activities to nurture confidence and prepare them for independent living. Pupils are rightly proud of this work.
The school has very high expectations for behaviour. Staff have frequent training in understanding the underlying causes of behaviour and how to respond to it. They consistently encourage and promote positive behaviours. The pastoral team deploys a range of bespoke strategies to support pupils to follow the school’s routines and expectations. These strategies are transformative. Pupils’ behaviour in lessons is excellent. They pay attention, listen to each other and try hard. These positive attitudes play a major role in securing pupils’ high achievements.
The school offers pupils many excellent opportunities that aim to make a contribution to their personal development… They are helped to understand topics like personal space and are taken on multiple visits into the community, go shopping and practise using public transport. These experiences help them prepare for independent living.”
Personal Development, Behaviour and Attitudes
The Personal Development and wellbeing of pupils is at the core of John Chilton School and is embedded into our vision, environment, curriculum and events to ensure our pupils achieve, belong and thrive. We pride ourselves on our provision that is pupil-centred, understands the individual needs of the pupils to support behaviour for learning, self-esteem, relationships and sense of identity. We celebrate achievement, diversity and community engagement.
We are a strong and experienced team to support pupils through therapies, lessons, social events, interventions, play, and transitions.
Nurturing approaches are at the heart of what we do; our staff understand and value our pupils’ unique learning styles and needs.
We work with our specialist staff, key partners and therapists when providing input for Personal Development, Behaviour and Attitudes, and Our Multi-Disciplinary Team, ‘Tender’, ‘Diversity Role Models’, visiting workshops and Connexions.
Our Personal Development also includes carefully planned opportunities and links within PSHE, Relationships and Health education, ICT, Internet safety, careers support (in line with Gatsby Benchmarks) , links to community, class café, work experience, travel training and British Values.
We offer a full curriculum that is based on Preparation for Adulthood, including functional skills qualifications and transition to next educational settings.
Our trauma-informed SEMH Team supports pupils’ wellbeing with a range of opportunities such as counselling, Music Therapy, access to our Therapy Dog and bespoke and Nurture-based interventions to promote social and play skills, adapted for different attachment styles. We understand that all behaviour is communication and our pupils’ wellbeing and sense of belonging correlates with their development, attendance, achievement, access to opportunities and life skills. For many pupils, we create individual behaviour plans and analyse behaviour data to implement and adapt impactful interventions. Our Attendance Team monitors attendance very carefully and works in partnership with professionals and families to support this.
We are also committed to the wellbeing of our staff who are offered a comprehensive package of support .
We facilitate specialist clinics on site to further support our pupils and families: vaccinations, dietitian, dental, paediatrician,bowel and bladder, vision and hearing.
John Chilton School is proud to be one of the first schools to achieve Re: Set Tender Healthy Award for our successful work with pupils on safe relationships.
We also achieved the Healthy Schools Silver Award, a reflection of our hard work to support pupils to lead healthy lives.
Building Respectful Relationships: Our Tender Partnership
We’ve partnered up with Tender Education and Arts (www.tender.org.uk) for whole-school input to promote a culture of healthy, equal and respectful relationships for the benefit of our school culture and the futures of our learners.
Through our workshops with Tender, our students cover topics like friendships, expressing emotions, consent, safety and boundaries in relationships. These are explored in age-appropriate ways, respecting diversity.
Tender visited us to deliver in-school training, workshops and creative campaigns for staff and the school community as part of our work.
John Chilton School is proud to be one of the first schools to achieve Healthy relationships Champion School Status