Please e-mail office@oakley.kent.sch.uk if you would like any of the information on our website in a different format.
Our children and young people are at the heart of everything we do.
A very warm welcome to Oakley School. We are the district Special School for children and young people from 3 to 19 years with a wide range of special educational needs located in our Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge (post-16) sites
Our Mission: Children and Young People at the heart of all we do.
Our Ethos: Work Hard, Be Kind, Have Fun & Stay Safe
Our Vision: To give all our children and young people opportunities to engage, explore, discover and develop their independence – to become confident, resilient, happy and well prepared for a positive and meaningful future.
At Oakley School we are ambitious for our pupils and offer a rich Creative Curriculum that is personalised and offers learning in school as well as in the community. Our skilled and dedicated staff team work very hard to make learning motivating, interactive, challenging and fun, whilst ensuring that all our children and young people feel safe, valued and self-confident. We promote “Skills for Life and Independence” so that when pupil leave Oakley School they are prepared for the next phase in their lives and have the best opportunities.
Pupils' wellbeing and engagement is central to all our decision making and how we structure our school and the interventions we use.
Our Wider Curriculum offers excellent enrichment activities including: lunch and after school clubs, curriculum trips and residential experiences in the United Kingdom and abroad. These opportunities provide pupils time and experiences to develop their life skills in new places and with different people in preparation for their next steps.
We work collaboratively across our school community with our Families, Therapists, NHS Colleagues and other professionals and external organisations to support and meet the needs of our pupils.
We hope that you enjoy your visit to our website, and that you find the information you are looking for. Please feel free to contact the school directly with any queries you may have. If you would like a paper copy of any of the information on our website, we would be happy to provide it, free of charge. Email office@oakley.kent.sch.uk
or call us on 01892 823096.
It is my privilege to be the Headteacher at Oakley School and we welcome you to visit the school so you can meet pupils and staff to experience our very special school.
Sam Perryman
Headteacher
Oakley pupils are grouped into Learning Pathways in terms of how they access the curriculum and are not a reflection of their individual level of learning.
At Oakley, we have developed our own curriculum identifying the key skills and progression of steps that all our pupils need to successfully transition into the next stage of their learning. The curriculum has been developed using the Early Years Framework, National Curriculum and our Accreditation Frameworks and we have called this the Oakley Learning Journey (OLJ). The OLJ also includes key functional skills required for skills for life and independence. The OLJ enables us to track pupils’ progress from the moment they join Oakley School until they leave. It also allows us to personalise the learning for each individual child or young person. Our Creative Curriculum has a thematic approach, and we teach the key skills and knowledge by engaging, exploring and discovering. Our topics are rotated and reviewed on a 4-year cycle to ensure pupils have a broad and rich curriculum. We have chosen a range of high-quality, culturally diverse texts to support the delivery of each thematic topic. These texts have been handpicked for each Phase and Learning Pathway, to promote breadth and progression in each pupil’s learning journey and to support our pupils to develop a love of reading and stories.
The Oakley Learning Journey is made up of seven areas, these are:
PRIME AREAS OF LEARNING | ||||||||
Communication and Language | Personal, Social, Emotional Development | Physical Development | ||||||
Listening, Attention & Understanding | Speaking | Self-Regulation | Managing Self | Building Relationships | Gross Motor Skills | Fine Motor Skills | ||
SPECIFIC AREAS OF LEARNING | ||||||||
Literacy | Mathematics | |||||||
Comprehension | Word Reading | Writing | Number |
Numerical Patterns
| ||||
Understanding the World | Expressive Arts and Design | |||||||
Past and Present |
People, Culture and Communities | The Natural World | Creating with Materials | Being Imaginative and Expressive |
All areas of the OLJ encourage communication, collaboration and problem solving and its effectiveness has been recognised by The Challenge Partner Organisation: ‘The highly effective curriculum prepares pupils for life beyond and after Oakley. The Oakley Learning Journey (OLJ) framework enables leaders to track pupil progress from Nursery to Year 14.’ Challenge Partner Report (November 2023).
The OLJ has also been recognised by SMSC National Quality Mark ‘The curriculum is an all-encompassing example of how SMSC can be the driver of teaching and learning rather than merely relying on opportunities to occur’. Oakley received the Gold Quality Mark in SMSC.
Below is our whole school 4-year thematic topic cycle from 2024 to 2028. All seven areas of our Oakley Learning Journey are taught every term. However, we have chosen a focus area/s for each term to ensure curriculum breadth and coverage.
Topic & Oakley Learning Journey focus | Term 1 | Term 2 | Term 3 | Term 4 | Term 5 | Term 6 |
Year 1 | Family Tree
PSED C&L Literacy | Jackanory
EA&D Literacy
| Fire and Ice
UtW EA&D PD | The Animal Kingdom
UtW Maths
| Everyday Heroes
PSED C&L UtW | Wonderous World
UtW EA&D Maths
|
Year 2 | Marvellous Me
PSED PD | Royal Retreats
UtW Literacy | To infinity and beyond…
UtW C&L Maths | Dinosaur Discoveries
UtW Maths | Greatest Show
EA&D Literacy | Global Kitchen
C&L UtW Math |
Year 3 | A day in the Life of…
PSED EA&D | Celebrities and Stars
UtW Literacy | Magical Journey
UtW PD Maths | From Paws to Claws
UtW Literacy | Pirates Ahoy!
C&L | Fabulous Festivals
UtW PD |
Year 4 | My Responsibilities
PSED | Guardians of the Kingdom
UtW Literacy | The Four Seasons
UtW C&L Maths | Under the Sea
UtW EA&D | Lights, Camera, Action!
PD Literacy | Go for Gold
Maths PSED |
Our school ethos of “work hard, be kind, have fun and stay safe” is embedded across our Creative Curriculum.
Oakley School is organised into 4 Phases, as the pupils progress through each Phase they learn to practice, apply, generalise and embed their skills and knowledge of OLJ objectives to develop their skills for life and independence. The Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) outcomes and termly targets identify areas of focus for each individual child and young person to work on at school, at home and in their local community. Learning, progress and successes are evidenced on Evidence for Learning (and where appropriate in workbooks). Progress is shared with families through Class Dojo, Progress Meetings, Annual Reviews and in Progress Reports. Within the Phases the pupils are grouped into Learning Pathways which ensures pupils have the most appropriate interventions that best suit individual learner needs.
Pupils are supported to access their learning through a Total Communication Approach: Spoken Language, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) which includes, visuals, Voice Output Communication Aids (VOCA), Makaton (signing), Picture Exchange Communication System (PECs). Staff tailor the communication to the needs of the pupils. We also ensure that pupils’ sensory needs are met within the classroom (see Universal Offer).
The school has adopted the THRIVE approach across the school to support the pupils’ social, emotional and mental health needs. THRIVE helps pupils to begin to recognise their feelings and find ways to manage their different emotions. This works in conjunction with Zones of Regulation and Interoception which help pupils to develop strategies to self soothe and regulate in readiness for learning.
At Oakley, we understand the significant role of play, awe and wonder in child development and learning. Play is a key strategy we use facilitate learning in a naturalistic and engaging way. We also use Intensive Interaction and Attention Oakley (based on Gina Davies’ Attention Autism programme) as a vehicle to deliver captivating inputs and promote shared attention: an essential skill for life and learning.
Please see below our Baselining Tool that teachers use to assess which band pupils are currently working within in each of the seven OLJ areas. This baselining tool allows us to adapt the learning objectives appropriately to each individual pupil and accounts for our children and young people’s ‘spikey’ learning profiles.