Aims & Ethos

Our Ethos…

Ensuring that no young learner is educationally disadvantaged.

Our vision…

To provide a nurturing & aspirational environment that empowers our students to develop into confident resilient adults who are prepared for the future.

Our core values…

Growth, Resilience, Excellence, Ambition and Respect

Growth: The act or process, or a manner of growing; development; gradual increase.
Resilience: The ability of a person to adjust to or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes, etc.
Excellence: The fact or state of excelling; superiority; eminence.
Ambition: An earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honour, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment.
Respect: Esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability.

GREAR: Another form of great
– Urban Dictionary

Our aims…

To enable our students to flourish and grow in all aspects of their development.
To build a culture of achievement, ambition and excellence.
To nurture and equip our students with moral values – honesty, integrity, empathy, respect; and the competencies that will enable them to engage fully.
To provide a curriculum that is underpinned by creativity, enquiry, functional literacy and numeracy.
To promote the active involvement of students in their learning and create a pathway of skills and qualifications that leads to further education, training or employment.
To promote and encourage development of a healthy lifestyle, self-worth, emotional well-being, tolerance and resilience.
To promote partnerships with parents, professionals and members of the wider community.
To encourage active citizenship and the readiness of students to make a positive contribution to society.
To broaden the inclusion and preventative offer of support to at risk students in mainstream schools, thereby reducing or eliminating the need for exclusions.

The objectives to achieve the vision:

Build closer partnerships between SILS, mainstream schools, as well as other service providers; to facilitate early intervention and provide better integrated support.
Offer personalised provision with multi-agency support for the families, carers and young people who attend SILS.
Fulfil the statutory responsibilities of Southwark Children’s Services to provide full time education for those excluded from school.
Support young parents returning to education in partnership with Southwark College and pupils with exclusions of 6 days or more.
Demonstrate improvement in attendance, reduction in fixed term exclusions and academic progress parallel to a mainstream environment.
Deliver optimum communication pathways with learners and all stakeholders, employing new technologies.
Ensure students leave SILS as confident, independent young adults, with integrity, who are ready to make a positive contribution to society.
To create distinct learning environments at Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4 and at the YPEC that meets the needs of pupils at each provision.
Develop the leadership within SILS to provide support across both key stages and deliver the shared vision for the entire school.
Include a wide range of multi-agency teams to provide support and guidance for pupils, their families and carers and staff. The engagement of the families and carers of individual learners is a key factor in the potential for significant change in the behaviours that have contributed to permanent exclusion from mainstream school.
Further develop a personalised curriculum that ensures young peoples’ academic and pastoral needs are met. Retaining young people within education and narrowing the achievement gap is of paramount importance to employment and/or further education.
Extend continuing professional development (CPD) to ensure that all staff assume shared responsibility for the education and well-being of young people within SILS,
To work with mainstream schools and academies to develop effective partnerships that support students’ behaviour and attendance.
To provide access to preventative short stay placements at KS3 as well as, day 6 provision, with a view to improved student behaviour and reduced levels of exclusion within the school community.