Over the summer break, our Skills for Life (SfL) classes underwent a significant upgrade. From September 2025, majority of SfL classes will be located together in one corridor, promoting better communication between students and staff as well as more opportunities to share best practice.
New classrooms, enhanced support
The Skills for Life pathway is designed specifically for students with highly complex physical, learning and medical needs, typically working at pre-entry level. With a focus on multi-disciplinary, integrated learning, this pathway provides small tutor groups with a rich blend of educational and therapeutic opportunities. Students benefit from a holistic approach to their learning that includes sensory and experiential learning activities delivered in a range of environments. This helps to broaden horizons, enhance engagement and support individual progress.
Creating inclusive, sensory-friendly classrooms
The new classrooms have been designed with inclusion at their core. Sensory areas form a key part of the learning environment, playing a vital role in meeting the diverse and changing needs of our students. To support this vision, a larger and more fully equipped classroom has been created for the Skills for Life 1 class, working with Tom Clarke and Tamsen Poley, Treloar’s Skills for Life Teachers. This upgraded space is designed to better accommodate their students and enhance their learning through improved resources and adaptive support.
Sensory areas in classrooms promote inclusive learning environment
Sensory areas in the new classroom will provide students with a safe space to explore their senses, helping them develop self-regulation skills and manage over-stimulation. The space has capacity to create zones of learning, including a core learning area and break out areas within the classroom. Examples of these are a dedicated soft-play area for students to engage in physical skills and a permanent dark tent, used for specific work on visual skills and mindfulness / well-being through sensory exploration both individually and in small groups. Additionally PC / iPad areas have been set up within the room for students to engage with technology, which has become a core part of our world, and there are also plans for a 'story corner' in the coming couple of months where learners will be able to participate and explore literacy themes when in choice time.