Pastoral Care

Durham Gateway students will be supported by high quality wrap-around care, with specialist intervention and therapeutic support provided where appropriate. Many students referred to the school will not have thrived within the relatively rigid delivery structures of mainstream education. We believe that students will be better served by a curriculum that is responsive to their strengths and interests, along with bespoke support, tailored according to their individual needs.

All students will be assessed upon entry to Durham Gateway. They will undertake baseline testing to establish their academic starting points, as well as their readiness to learn, apply social skills and behaviours. To inform support planning, daily behaviour monitoring will provide information on interactions with others, application to work, ability to remain on task and response to difficulties encountered. All of this information will be logged on the personal profile page of the Etracker.

Support on offer will include:

• Additional learning support, provided both within the classroom and on an individual basis according to need. In particular, many students will have made less progress in the core skills of mathematics and English than other young people of their age, and recovery strategies will be fundamental to the support offer

• Development of life and social skills, supporting young people who face multiple barriers to learning or whose progress is impeded by weak social and emotional intelligence

• Externally sourced specialist therapeutic support to explore and address psychological, emotional and social issues

• Looked-after children in particular, may require additional social and emotional therapies, and well-coordinated multi-agency support work. Each student will have a dedicated Pastoral Learning Mentor with the skills and experience to coordinate this personalised provision

• Students with special educational needs (SEN) will be comprehensively reviewed and monitored, ensuring that personalised support strategies evolve over time, as the young person develops. The SENCO, student support staff and teachers will formulate and implement a coherent range of interventions that could include:

Durham Gateway has clear proven systems in place to measure progress and behavioral improvement and to engage students in their own development, through a system of rewards and sanctions. This is particularly important in preparing students to progress post 16 in education.