Our Ethos and Approach
Our ethos
We believe each student, irrespective of age or background, has the competency to learn, the potential to ‘grow’ and the ability to change. Through a process of nurture, guidance, safety and positive learning experiences, students are able to replace past experiences of failure and underachievement with successful and personally rewarding outcomes. This allows them to revise distorted and usually inaccurate perceptions of their own capabilities. They are empowered to reflect about themselves and their abilities in a more satisfying and healthy way, offering real direction to their intellectual and personal growth.
We recognise that “positive educational outcomes” for students entails much more than simply achieving academic status. There has to be an appropriate balance between academic learning, exploration of effective social skills, developing strategies for self-management behaviour, recognition of achievements and opportunities for emotional growth and understanding. Offering young people an empathic, reflective, responsible, stimulating, and enjoyable learning environment helps them to gain these qualities for themselves and encourages them to make full use of the many living-learning experiences available to them.
Our approach
Our philosophy moves away from a biased, blameful, competitive approach to one that promotes fairness, respect and inclusion. We promote an understanding of cultural and individual diversity and discourage against deviant and discriminative behaviour. Our aim is to assist young people in coming to terms with difficult areas of their lives and consolidate areas in which they function well. We encourage them to view education as a positive and rewarding experience and where possible, promote their successful return to a mainstream school or a college placement.