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Welcome to the Unity College Parent Information page. Here, you will find all the essential information you need to support your child's educational journey with us.
View Our Schools Policies
Our school policies are designed to ensure a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for all our pupils, staff, and families. These policies reflect our commitment to our EPIC values, high standards, and the well-being of our school community.
Our educational curriculum provides three pathways, depending on needs:
Pathway 1 – The Formal Curriculum offers National Curriculum learning from specialist teachers and qualifications that include Functional Skills, BTEC, Trinty Awards, ELC, Duke of Edinburgh, and GCSE options. This academic pathway focuses on preparing students for age-appropriate outcomes. Students will access sa mall amount of the Equals Curriculum to enable them to fill any developmental gaps missed in early/younger years focused on life skills and Preparation for Adulthood. The units are selected based on the individual needs of the class and is bespoke across the school.
Pathway 2—The Semi-Formal pathway uses the thematic approach of the Equals Curriculum, which focuses on meeting the academic needs of pupils who are working consistently and over time significantly below age-related expectations. This curriculum is delivered primarily at our Roots site and offers a nurturing environment that strongly focuses on learning behaviours and builds on missed learning.
The students have an opportunity to interchange between pathways based on progress and need, making the curriculum bespoke for all our learners. We have an inclusive ethos for which students can join us throughout the school year and may often have experienced periods of disrupted learning or time out of school. We adapt our teaching and offer interventions to support the needs of our pupils with universal, targeted and individualised approaches that allow them to thrive, both academically and socially.
The rationale to this curriculum is designed from the following three questions and offers opportunity for the children to fill missing gaps based on trauma experiences. The intent being that they will be able to live their best possible life with all their entitled foundations for success:
1. Can developmental trauma impact early learning / developmental milestones?
2. Can mental health difficulties / trauma being triggered lead to a regression in abilities?
3. Can a young person who has experienced developmental trauma present as more able than they are?
Yes, for many of our young people, they were experiencing significant trauma in their early life, which would have impacted their ability to learn. This can be in terms of social and emotional learning, in addition to academic learning. If our young people are experiencing trauma during infancy / nursery / primary school, they would not have had a capacity to learn, as they would have been in flight / fight / freeze survival mode. They may have also had significant periods of time where they were not attending school. This can lead to gaps in their academic knowledge and skills, which then need to be filled at a later date, despite not appearing to be developmentally appropriate. In summary, we can't learn when we aren't safe.
“Students who are loved at home come to school to learn. Students who aren’t…come to school to be loved.” - Nicholas A. Ferroni
Yes, developmental trauma impacts neurological development. This is very much an over-simplified summary, but our young people who have experienced developmental trauma typically have a smaller window of tolerance and more likely enter fight / flight / freeze. When this is activated, our limbic system takes over, activity in our cortex decreases and we are less able to learn, remember things, or engage in cognitive processes that we may otherwise be able to do.
Evidence suggests that when people experience PTSD type symptoms following trauma, this impacts their memory, metacognitive skills, executive functioning and overall cognitive function. Therefore, when our young people are less well regulated, we will see a decrease in their academic performance. They may also be less likely to 'compensate' for the gaps in their learning (above) as they are when they are doing well, as this will place a higher cognitive demand on them.
Again, there are a couple of parts to this. Our young people might have a 'spiky' cognitive profile. Most young people have broadly similar performance across different cognitive abilities - their performance in different areas and skills vary of course, based on their individual areas of strength, but these variations aren't huge.
However, for our young people, due to gaps in their learning, and trauma which has impacted their cognitive development, they may have some specific areas of strength and difficulty which vary hugely. This is something that we also often see in young people with neurodiversity, which we also know is more highly represented in our young people. For many of our young people, there may be an intersection here between trauma and neurodiversity.
This means that if we just look at one area of their performance, they can seem really able. However, in other areas, they may be far behind age related expectations. Therefore, measuring their performance in just one area, gives a really limited view of their abilities or skillset. This can lead to them either being underestimated, or people assuming that they can do things that they cant - each of which comes with its own difficulties and knock on impact with how they experience learning / education.
Pupils need to bring a healthy packed lunch provided by their residential
care homes.
Pupils in Key Stage 3 and 4 are supervised on the school site and are
no permitted off-site.
Post 16 pupils may go offsite at lunch pending a risk assessment and
agreement from professionals involved.
Contact should be made on the first day of non-attendance giving the reason and indicating when you expect your child to return.
Absence should be reported the school administrator.
Unity College will provide a formal academic or behavioural report every half term.
The residential homes are provided with a daily update both verbally and via an End of Day Report.
We also hold weekly celebration assemblies and bi-annual open days for carers and professionals to celebrate and share success with the pupils.
Your child’s attendance will be monitored in exactly the same ways as it is in mainstream schools, with formal attendance records in the form of a register being kept by the school.
Any concerns regarding attendance will be dealt with under current procedures and will involve close liaison between parents/carers, College staff, Local Authority and Children’s Services professionals.
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Discover how young people have experienced positive outcomes through our Education, Care and Support services.
Mark H, ParentI can’t thank Keys enough for the care and support they’ve provided for my daughter. The staff are always attentive, and they genuinely listen to her needs. She has made amazing progress in both her education and personal growth, and I see a brighter future for her every day. Keys has truly changed our lives for the better.
We welcome referrals and enquiries from parents and local authorities. To discuss how Keys Education can support your child, please contact us using the form below or reach out to our admissions team directly.
Parents, carers, or local authorities can contact us to discuss the needs of the child.
We ask the person wishing to commission the placement (normally the Local Authority) sends over relevant information, such as, EHCP, previous school reports, professionals reports.
This allows us to conduct a thorough assessment to determine if we are the right provision to meet needs.
Once we feel needs can be met, we work closely with all parties to facilitate the placement process. If the Local Authority request the place, this is subject to funding being agreed at a panel meeting.
After admission, we provide continuous support to ensure the child settles in well and their needs are met.
If you would like to make a referral, please email or call our team. They will be happy to help. We look forward to partnering with you to provide the best possible education and support for your child.
Email: referrals@keys.co.uk
Phone: 0121 728 7800
If you would like to make a referral, please email or call our team. They will be happy to help. We look forward to partnering with you to provide the best possible education and support for your child.
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