Our Curriculum
We offer a broad and balanced curriculum individually tailored to the needs of the young person.
Our ambitious curriculum
At Howard House School, we encourage all students, regardless of their ability, to work hard and reach their full potential, by providing them with a challenging curriculum that allows them to exceed and excel.
We offer a broad and balanced curriculum, individually tailored to meet the needs of our students. Our curriculum is ambitious and does not cap the potential of our students, but rather help them realise it.
Where possible, our curriculum follows the guidelines of the National Curriculum, and we will strive to ensure that the young person works at or towards their appropriate Key Stage. We acknowledge that for many of our students, who may have missed episodes of education we will also provide a ‘stage not age’ curriculum. The curriculum has been expanded to deliver differentiated qualifications:
- Mathematics AQA: Entry Level, Functional Skills Level 1/2 and GCSE Mathematics
- English AQA: Entry Level, Functional Skills Level 1/2 and GCSE English Language
- Humanities (OCR): Geography, History Humanities; Award, Certificate, Diploma, Entry Level 1/2/3 and GCSE History
- Science AQA: Entry Level 1/2/3 and AQA GCSE Trilogy Science
- BTEC Sweet Personal Growth and Well-Being (Personal Development): Level 1/2/3
- Physical Education (non-assessed): with the option for OCR (Cambridge Nationals) Sports Science
- Duke of Edinburgh: opportunity to develop attributes such as resilience, confidence, commitment, drive, self-awareness, empathy, team working and problem-solving.
- Open Awards in Skills for further development and learning- which provides pathways in areas such as: Building and construction; Business, retail and customer services; Catering and hospitality; Creative industries; Digital skills; hair and beauty; Horticulture, Environment and Animal care; Sport, fitness and leisure
The SMSC programme at Howard House School has multiple aims: close the cultural gap that many of our students have, support and promote good and improving behaviour, encourage a healthy lifestyle and promote good social skills. The SMSC programme also entails a residential trip away from the School.
Reading and Writing, including Phonics
As reading is the key that unlocks the whole curriculum so the ability to efficiently decode is essential.
Howard House School specialises in developing reading skills using Twinkl Phonics, which is a DfE validated full systematic, synthetic phonics programme that contains everything you need to deliver phonics teaching to children from the very beginning of learning to read and write to full fluency. It delivers GPCs in a clear and rigorous way so that skills are built progressively over time, ensuring that children have a secure base from which to develop.
We also use That Reading Thing, a phonics programme specifically designed to support secondary age students, who are not confident in phonics.
