Understanding Inclusion at MHS

To support the neurological differences of our students, we provide small-group, subject specific interventions.

These interventions include:

• Precision Teaching: An instructional approach that utilises direct and frequent measurement of a skill, such as numeracy and spelling, in a 10-15 minute session.
• Occupational Therapy: OT helps ith barriers that impact a students' emotional, social and physical needs. As a therapy, it helps children participate in everyday activities and can improve their fine and gross motor skills.
• Educational Psychologist Support: An EP supports students where concerns have been raised regarding a child's learning and development. We work alongside the Local Authority's EP service to support students.
• Therapy Carousel: An intervention divided into three terms (Lego, Art and Talking). These sessions develop social skills, reflection, emotional maturity, expression and teamwork.
• Numeracy: Supporting students with basic numeracy skills to enable them to transfer these skills to the mainstream classroom and outside world.
• Travel Training: A programme that supports students, particularly those with EHCPs, learn how to travel independently using public transport.

To support our students with closing the vocabulary, reading and communication gaps, we provide in-class and small group interventions.

These interventions include:

• SALT (Speech and Language Therapy): A speech and language intervention to support students with speech, language and communication needs.
• Dyslexia Gold: A reading, spelling and eye-control programme that supports students with developing their skills through multi-sensory activites. This particularly supports students who are, or who are highly likely, dyslexic.
• Lexia: A bespoke programme tailored to the individual student's needs with a focus on word-level, sentences and comprehension.
• Phonics: An intervention designed to support students phonological awareness - to develop their letter sounds, decoding and reading.
• Handwriting: A tailored intervention to support students with their fine motor skills, pen grip and formation of letters whilst developing confidence in writing.
• Reading: A tailored intervention focusing on fluency, high frequency words and comprehension skills.

Students are supported to develop confidence in reading, sourcing and interpreting information from a text.

To promote positive social, emotional wellbeing and mental health, we have created a tailored package of support for our students. This is delivered through Summit, our SEMH provision.

There are two strands to our SEMH support; 'Awareness of Self' and 'Awareness of Others'. These interventions include:

Thrive: To provide opportunities for students to receive consistant positive experiences with trusted adults by way of collaborative communication in an encouraging way. Students' individual social and emotional needs are met through in-class strategies, group and one-to-one sessions. Students explore how their brains function in Being, Doing and Thinking stages.

Zones of Regulation: An intervention aimed at recognising, organising and supporting feelings, state of alertness, and energy levels.

LNK Mentoring: LNK (Live Not Knives) is an innovative, youth-led charity that works to prevent knife crime, serious youth violence and school suspensions by engaging, educating and empowering disadvantaged young people. These sessions support students to enjoy their lives and improve their future prospects through one-to-one mentoring.

Social Skills: An intervention to support the making and maintaining of relationships., whether friendships or familial relationships.

Conflict Resolution: A practical series of workshops to support students to find strategies to cope in situations where disagreements, leading to conflict, may occur.

Peer Mentoring: A mentoring programme between students in which one student has more experience and training and can provide support, knowledge and skills. Peer mentoring may be one-to-one or in a small group. Stop,

Think, Feel Do: A theory we apply to support students in moments of difficult choices. This practice supports the development of self-control, perceptual and communications skills, cognitive problem solving skills and behavioural skills.

Restorative Practice: A way of working through conflict that students are experiencing that focuses on repairing the harm that has been done and restoring any relationships that have been impacted.

We recognise for our students there are layers of complexity when it comes to ensuring our students access the education they are entitled to, deserve, and need to overcome with the barriers they face.

Whilst our priority is to ensure all students attend school, access learning, and achieve positive outcomes that allow them to open doors to aspirational careers in the future, we are an inclusive school that embraces a personalised approach for each individual student, and we recognise some students need more support than others.

Our alternative education provision is underpinned by our missed learning strategy. Missed learning is defined as learning that is missed causing significant gaps in knowledge due to several barriers that our students may have experienced during their time in education. The missed learning strategy identifies the challenges some of our students face with regular attendance and offers a personalised, proactive response so that we close gaps in knowledge, increase accessibility to school and give students the tools they need to succeed.

We have used our rigorous data analysis to identify key categories of students and the reasons they currently experience gaps in knowledge due to missed learning. The principle is to provide each category with a method of overcoming the barriers presented and to increase student attendance over time so that students can access the broad and rich Meridian Curriculum.

Our provisions are: 

Alpine- This provision is for Emotionally Based School Avoidance

Crest- This provision is for students who have had multiple suspensions

Serentity- This provsion is for students with an EHCP or pending and EHCP

Horzizon- This provision is our online tuition for KS3 students who have an EHCP who are awaiting a specialist provision.

In Alpine is the most extensive mountain range reflecting the extensive support our students will receive whilst participating on this pathway and a level of personalisation they need to overcome the challenges they face.

Alpine pathway students may have missed learning due to school avoidance, anxiety, SEMH need, or medical absence, which has led to increased anxiety in returning to school due to being behind in their learning. Alpine is a student led provision which aims to reinegrate students back into mainstream classrooms.

Students added to the Alpine Pathway:

• Start their day at in the Learning Lab. Students will complete self-quizzing activities using their knowledge organisers, SPARX Maths and SPARX reader.
• Students will have an emotional resilience workshop from our ‘Awareness of Self' SEMH strand and a small group Thrive mentoring session.
• Students will attend their Period 5 lessons in mainstream school.
• Students will have an allocated keyworker from the Summit or Pinnacle team who will monitor their attendance and hold fortnightly meetings with parents/carers to review the provision, where agreements will be made to attend mainstream lessons.

To ride the crest of something is to enjoy exceptional success because of particular event or situation.

We want our students to feel supported and to ride the crest of being successful learners. We understand that sometimes students don't make positive choices, but we also understand that this is a form of communication and that a need may be being expressed.

As such, we aim to create a learning environment where these students are nurtured and supported to make positive choices and be able to reintegrate back into mainstream lessons. KS3 students on the Crest Pathway will attend school from 9am - 2pm and have their sessions based in Summit.

KS4 students will have personalised timings to ensure they are able to get the most from a hybrid timetable of support in the Learning Lab and subject specialist teachers.

Serenity is the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled. This is what we aim to create for those students with EHCPs, or those undergoing an EHCP needs assessment.

Students are supported through Pinnacle, our Enhanced Learning Provision. Whilst some students with EHCPs are able to cope fully within mainstream lessons, we understand that others may require more personalised and tailored support and can therefore be supported via the following:

• A personalised timetable
• A space to work or regulate in our Serenity Learning Lab.
• Some time to regulate or reflect in our sensory room
• Access to a key adult at all times
• Access to a small Pinnacle tutor group as appropriate
• Access to all the interventions on offer as appropriate

Students who access the Horizon pathway are those with an EHCP who are awaiting a specialist placement at another school.

This KS3 provision allows students to access high quality tutoring delivered by our teachers in English, Maths, Science and Humanities, as well as small group mentoring delivered by our Head of Inclusion.