Bower Lodge School is a day school for boys and girls aged 4 to 11 with a diagnosis of autism, and who have a range of complex learning needs, communication and sensory difficulties. Pupils are placed from a wide range of local authorities, and they all have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
At Bower Lodge the curriculum is every planned learning experience the pupils have as a member of the school, both learnt formally within a lesson or informally outside the classroom throughout the whole school day. It is all the planned activities that we organise in order to promote learning, personal growth, and development. Teachers, support staff, therapists and instructors structure these experiences to ensure that they have the most positive effect on the attainment, progress and personal development of all pupils. Our curriculum also incorporates the opportunistic learning experiences that occur throughout the day, and which staff pro-actively seek out and capitalise on, in line with the autism-specific elements of our curriculum framework.
Our curriculum is driven by the pupil’s needs and interests, whilst also being informed by Development Matters, National Curriculum, PSHE Association Planning Framework for Pupils with SEND and the Autism Education Trust’s Pupil Progression Framework. Our curriculum is broad and varied and provides pupils with rich learning experiences that are highly personalized.
We are committed to core British Values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect for, and tolerance of, those with different faiths and beliefs, and through our PSHEE and RSE curriculum we actively promote our pupils’ understanding of and respect for a diverse range of people, especially those who belong to groups susceptible to discrimination.
As a school for children with autism, our aim is that pupils make the maximum progress possible in the areas of difficulty typically associated with that diagnosis, including their social communication, emotional regulation, and sensory processing. Our curriculum also aims to ensure pupils can both sustain and generalise the skills they acquire, over time, and across different contexts and circumstances. Above all, our aim as a school is to ensure our pupils leave us with the highest possible levels of independence and autonomy, whether that be through the acquisition of practical and academic skills, regulation of their own sensory and emotional needs, or effective articulation of their own choices and pursuit of their own interests and life goals.
Structure of the School Day
The school day is carefully planned in each class, according to the needs of pupils. There are four main learning activities in each class,
each day. These are augmented by several carefully planned and structured, shorter activities to support literacy, numeracy and personal development.