The Primary Inclusion Department at BSB is responsible for ensuring that each and every child is able to access the curriculum regardless of culture, gender, disability, ethnicity, age and language. We aim to meet the individual needs of every child requiring additional support in order to help them to achieve their full potential. Our role is diverse and challenging but also hugely enjoyable and rewarding.
Where possible, support is given in class with some withdrawal when necessary. It may involve either short or longer term intervention and can be with individuals, small groups or whole classes.
Each Year Group in the Primary School has a dedicated Inclusion Teacher who is responsible for supporting children who may have English as an Additional Language (EAL), Additional Educational Needs (AEN) and/or require Extension and Enrichment (E&E). They work in partnership with the class teachers to plan and meet the needs of children in the year group. Learning Assistants and Speech and Language Therapists also provide valuable support and specialist interventions. We also work closely with the School Counsellor, local educational and clinical psychologists and Occupational Therapists.
Our EAL method combines pre-teaching and reinforcing key vocabulary. A child’s language needs are identified quickly and learning is customised. EAL is taught in small, dedicated groups and in the form of additional support during mainstream lessons. Our weekly EAL Lunch Club puts an emphasis on social language skills. EAL Home Study Support is also available.
We offer a full immersion programme for Upper Primary students (Years 3-6) who arrive at BSB with little or no English. The aim of the programme is to help the new arrivals develop their language skills sufficiently with intensive language support in order to have access to the curriculum in English. Teaching and learning takes place in small mixed-age groups. As Immersion students make progress in English, they gradually join their mainstream classes for more subjects and move to the next level of EAL support with an Inclusion Teacher in their Year Group.
Every student’s personal progress is important to us, and we firmly believe in helping our students achieve their potential. After a teacher identifies a possible need for additional support, our Inclusion team can offer assessments to identify specific requirements. Then, after discussion with parents, we can establish a support programme that could include help in class, extension activities, and parental assistance at home. We also work closely with teachers and other specialist staff within and beyond the school. Our Inclusion team work to identify all specific and extra needs, give each child equal opportunities, encourage every child to reach their full potential and offer support to enable children to reach that potential.
At BSB, we challenge capable students to go further. We believe that the way to secure performance at the highest level is to deliver an educational system that expects ‘significantly more from more students’. In order to achieve this, learning is differentiated so that all students are challenged appropriately and given the opportunity to excel.
Indication of high achievement and learning potential is identified through the following aptitudes:
Students who demonstrate exceptional ability in any given subject will be extended through learning in more depth and/or by being enriched through additional opportunities. Their learning is extended through and beyond lessons by varying the work required of them, giving them broader areas to study, more complicated questions to answer or private research projects to undertake. As a result, talented students are able to get more out of their time at BSB.