September Newsletter 2024
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June Newsletter 2024
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June 2021
Newsletter- June 2021
Chances - The Alternative Provision That Works!
The Chances Curriculum
At Chances the main aim is to work with students and return them back into mainstream education as quickly as possible. It's why we focus purely on early intervention and supporting your students at an early stage as possible.
It's also why our curriculum comprises all learning and other experiences that their mainstream school plans for its students. We want their experience to be as close to that of a mainstream school as possible so that when they return to school there isn't a huge period of readjustment.
We work with our partner schools to share the learning that they want the students to undertake and create individual learning plans. There remains a full timetable of lessons with high expectations of what your students can achieve! The curriculum that we provide aims to be broad, balanced and relevant to all students as individuals and differentiated to meet their individual needs. It allows students to develop a wide range of knowledge, concepts and skills and equip them for the next stages of their development whether academic or to enter employment.
The aims of the Chances curriculum are derived from the overall school aims. They are for all students to:
Achieve their potential in as many ways as possible
Develop spiritual and moral values
Obtain a variety of skills and qualifications which will prepare them for the next stage of their lives
Be part of a happy community within which all will feel secure and valued
Development in all these areas is essential to establishing high standards of attainment for all students.
Within Lessons
Lesson time remains very important at Chances. Constant reminders of high expectations stay in place as we believe this has a positive knock on effect on behaviour overall. Students have 5 lessons a day, all provided by qualified teachers. Students will receive English, Maths and Science lessons each day, alongside a number of vocational courses and any additional work you as a school would want completed. Additional numeracy and literacy interventions are implemented in the timetable where needed to support learning or catch up any education missed. The Consistency across all lessons is paramount and communication between staff between lessons key.
Outside Of Lessons
At Chances we believe that students settle best when they have a familiar person that they can relate to, who knows them and is trusted to meet their individual needs.
Our Key Workers support your students, their parents/carers and your school through the development of meaningful relationships in which students thrive. This gives parents confidence and schools have a consistent point of contact.
Key Workers meet your students each week (or as often as needed) to discuss any issues around education and their emotional and social well being. Having formed a strong relationship with a student, Key Workers are critical to support a young person throughout their package, act as a link person for any outside agencies, give the student a voice at meetings and provide support during any reintegration stage.
Vocational Subjects and Working With External Agencies
At Chances, to ensure we can provide your students with a well rounded educational experience, we work with a number of different outside agencies who provide in depth learning in subject areas where we may not have specialists who can teach the lesson. We provide a number of vocational subjects where students can gain certificates even in their short stay at the provision - giving them a sense of reward and achievement when they leave us.
Forest School - Our in house instructor provides students with a Forest School experience - a child-centred inspirational learning process, that offers opportunities for holistic growth through regular sessions.
Art - Local artist, Peter Margerum, supports students in their art lessons with projects such as creating garden features for our outdoor space.
Cooking - As a trained Chef, our Deputy Head Steve Evans is able to deliver a cooking syllabus that incorporates valuable life skills and helps our students understand healthy eating.First Aid - Trained first aiders deliver a beginners course which provides a comprehensive set of practical skills needed by first aiders in real life situations, giving our students both the ability and knowledge to deal with first aid emergencies.
Hair and Beauty - Chances have a specialist room where with the support of a specialist we could deliver courses to help our students to start working and gaining additional skills in the industry.
Personal Development - Bespoke packages aimed at the students in our care support their well being. This involves knowledge, attitudes, skills, relationships and behaviour that can be utilised in and outside the classroom.
Music - Workers from Daisi Arts Education Organisation come into Chances, supporting 1-1 music sessions and creating opportunities that improve the outcomes for our students across their creative learning and social needs.
Please contact a member of the team if you have any questions about ways in which you feel we could potentially support any of your students.
April 2021
Newsletter- April 2021
Chances - The Alternative Provision That Works!
Partnering Schools Feedback
Parent / Carer Feedback
Student Feedback
Returning to School
The aim for any student at Chances is to return to mainstream education. We provide early intervention and continue to have extremely positive results with over 90% of our packages this academic year ending with a positive outcome to date.
We are unique in what we do and offer an expertise that helps your students re-engage with education and avoid exclusion. We focus purely on early intervention and refrain from moving away from what has made us so successful. There remains a strong focus on attracting the ‘right’ students who we can support and help and we put in a lot of effort that ensure there is a holistic approach when supporting your student when reintegrating back into school. This includes providing detailed ‘Ready for Return’ assessments which give detailed data on where the student is currently at and what areas they continue to need support in. We also provide you as a school a set of skills and strategies that work in supporting behaviour at Chances and can be adapted for mainstream education as well as capturing the students voices to help them take accountability of their return to school.
Whichever one of our bespoke packages a student is on, their journey with us includes their mainstream school and we make sure they are aware that they remain part of that process and still have a sense of belonging to you. They need to want to succeed and we help them achieve that!
Please contact a member of the team if you have any questions about ways in which you feel we could potentially support any of your students.
*costs for the new financial year may vary depending on the package - please talk to a member of the team if more information is required.
February 2021
Newsletter- February 2021
Chances - The Alternative Provision That Works!
Latest News at Chances
As for everyone in education, it has been an extremely busy period for the staff at Chances Educational Support Services. Not only have we implemented the testing system for our students and staff, put into place all our procedures to ensure everyone is safe in the building but we have also remained fully open to support some of the most vulnerable children in our society. Over 80% of our students still attend school and 87% of those remote learning are fully engaged in the full timetable with additional support on offer in our bespoke remote learning package.
The Chances team has risen admirably to the challenge of another national lockdown and continued to enjoy working collaboratively with all of our partner schools, who are also working incredibly hard!
Well Being At Chances
At Chances we continue to keep your students safe and engaged in their education. As we continue to move into the new term and support our students, both at home remote learning or in school, we continue to take pride in the way we support their well being and work with them and their families to ensure they receive the help required to get through this very difficult period.
Every child at Chances is given a Key Worker whom they have regular meetings, to support them with any ongoing issues, most of which are from outside of education but are having a negative effect on their learning. We put into place skills and strategies that they can take back into the classroom to support them in their engagement but also highlight any issues that might need the support of an external agency, acting as the link personnel to set up any appropriate meetings.
Personal development is woven into the curriculum at Chances and Mr Leverton leads lessons where students look in detail at how they can recognise their emotions, learn supportive skills and realise it's ‘good to talk’.
Students also take a well being assessment, developed by the Chances team, that identifies any areas where students are feeling anxious or suffering from mental health issues. Chances staff are able to look at the world through the child's eyes to be aware of both how they feel and what practical skills and thinking strategies are needed to manage a situation successfully. We also have the time and expertise to talk to the families and support the whole household. Both parents and students have acknowledged the hard work and effort put in by our team and have given positive feedback.
Returning to School
The aim for any student at Chances is to return to mainstream education. We provide early intervention and continue to have extremely positive results with over 90% of our packages this academic year ending with a positive outcome to date.
We are unique in what we do and offer an expertise that helps your students re-engage with education and avoid exclusion. We focus purely on early intervention and refrain from moving away from what has made us so successful. There remains a strong focus on attracting the ‘right’ students who we can support and help and we put in a lot of effort that ensure there is a holistic approach when supporting your student when reintegrating back into school. This includes providing detailed ‘Ready for Return’ assessments which give detailed data on where the student is currently at and what areas they continue to need support in. We also provide you as a school a set of skills and strategies that work in supporting behaviour at Chances and can be adapted for mainstream education as well as capturing the students voices to help them take accountability of their return to school.
Whichever one of our bespoke packages a student is on, their journey with us includes their mainstream school and we make sure they are aware that they remain part of that process and still have a sense of belonging to you. They need to want to succeed and we help them achieve that!
At Chances we offer a variety of different packages that can support your school and your students - but we can also be as innovative and flexible as you need us to be to suit whatever support would benefit you and your children!
If you have any questions about what we do and how we do it - please do not hesitate to contact us and speak to Gary Hayes our Headteacher.
Email: gary.hayes@spacepsm.org
Telephone: 01626 864412
October 2020
Newsletter- October 2020
Chances - The Alternative Provision That Works!
Chances Aims
The main aim of our provision is to offer a range of unique education and well-being support packages, both formal and informal, to help students re-engage with education, avoid exclusion and help de-escalate some of the challenges they may be facing that often impact school life.
For the 2019/20 academic year we wanted to continue to develop and widen our offer for early intervention. Whilst being inclusive and supportive, we wanted to maintain what we were good at as a school and ensure we provided an outstanding quality education for students and partnering schools.
Proof that it worked!
Successful Reintegrations -
Our success rate at reintegrating your students back into mainstream education remained as high as ever with 83% of our students fully returning to our partner schools and thriving. For those transitioning to a different school or provision, the support we provided meant those young people stayed in education! This is what we aim to do and we continue to be able to do this like no other school in Devon.
Academic Results -
Once again all the year 11's that attended Chances obtained all of the GCSEs that they were entered into. This is so important to us at Chances. Many other Alternative Provisions concentrate on vocational course and Functional Skills, but at Chances we have very high expectations of what our students can achieve and last year 100% of our students made academic progress from their current working level when they joined us.
OFSTED -
Ofsted inspected us in February 2020 and we’re pleased to have been recognised as a ‘Good’ provider. We encourage everyone to read our report which states how ‘pupils are proud of the school and their achievements’ and how most pupils ‘reintegrate back into mainstream school successfully’ after staff build ‘strong relationships and are key to pupils positive attitudes’.
Engagement -
When at Chances students engage in and enjoy their learning. Average attendance levels raise by 34%, which means we have young people in school more often and therefore we are able to support the emotional and social needs they have, creating a positive effect on behaviour when back in school. The work completed is always to a high standard due to the very high expectations that staff hold.
Parents and Student Feedback -
Students and their families always speak very highly of Chances after using the provision for a placement. 100% of the responses stated that parents and carers felt ‘the school responds well to my child's concerns’ with 100% agreeing that their ‘child is taught well at this school and made good progress academically. The students expressed that they felt safe at the provision and that the ‘behaviour they experienced at Chances was good’ and that ‘teachers gave them work that challenged them'.
Numbers -
Chances currently works with 20 plus schools and we supported 117 students last year. When you take into account our high success rate that's a lot of positive differences being made to young people's lives and the local communities they live in!
Behaviour -
The OFSTED inspectors commented on the calm and supportive environment created at Chances stating ‘pupil’s learning is rarely disrupted’. This was due to a new behavioural policy that was implemented at the start of the year and a consistent approach from the staff team. We are very proud that visitors often forget they are in a school full of students who had been sent to us as they were disengaging in their mainstream education.
Safeguarding -
As recognised in our Ofsted report, there continues to be a strong culture of safeguarding at Chances. Whilst safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, the central safeguarding team at Chances was restructured to include a range of expertise and personalities to provide opportunities for staff development. The current team are all highly experienced, have good attention to detail and have a proven record of engaging the most vulnerable students.
Curriculum -
A broader, ambitious, and ultimately, improved curriculum has been developed to suit our students' needs. This was designed with the changes made to the OFSTED framework. Our school day reflects that of a mainstream school as to ensure reintegrations back into school are more likely to be successful. Opportunities for the young people we work with became the focus, with an emphasis on students leaving the school in a better position, both academically and pastorally.
Home Learning -
During Lockdown, over 88% of Chances students engaged fully in a specially designed and personalised home learning system. A report by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) stated that teachers in the most deprived schools reported on only 30% of pupils returning their last piece of work. Given Chances were working with the students who were traditionally refusing to engage with their learning we were very happy with the amount of young people we managed to get completing the work staff were setting.
Why it works
Chances is unique, there is not any other provision like us! We focus purely on early intervention and refrain from moving away from what has made us so successful. There remains a strong focus on attracting the ‘right’ students who we can support and help. As an early intervention provision our aim of reintegrating young people back into a mainstream setting can not be forgotten. We do not mix groups of students with others who have more complex and negative behavior traits as this only has only ever proved to be detrimental to the success rates of reintegration back into the mainstream environment.
Through striving to recognise and meet the needs of each individual student, primarily through short and effective intervention packages, our practice is characterised by, but not limited to:
High expectations of student behaviour and achievement.
A commitment to high quality teaching, learning and assessment.
The delivery of an ambitious, relevant and balanced curriculum.
Working alongside partner schools to support a student’s learning and ensure a successful reintegration into mainstream education.
Creating and maintaining a warm, safe and friendly environment.
What Our Students Said To Us Last Year
As students come to the end of their journey with us at Chances, we now encourage them to create their own brick and become part of the school's success story to inspire others.
Moving forward
At Chances we offer a variety of different packages that can support your school and your students - but we can also be as innovative and flexible as you need us to be to suit whatever support would benefit you and your children!
If you have any questions about what we do and how we do it - please do not hesitate to contact us and speak to Gary Hayes our Headteacher.
Email: gary.hayes@spacepsm.org
Telephone: 01626 864412