ABOUT US

Birtle View School offers all its students a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum, including entitlement to National Curriculum, within a safe and caring environment, where individual views on religious and cultural issues are respected. It has high expectations in terms of attendance, behaviour and positive attitude to learning and works closely with parents, carers and the local community to achieve these expectations.

Birtle View School is situated in Heywood and forms a part of the special educational provision in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale.

The school caters for 50 students aged 2 - 19 years, who have profound and multiple, complex or severe learning difficulties. They will have, or be in the process of obtaining a Statement of Special Educational Needs.

The school was built in 1967 as a junior training centre, but recently, there have been a number of improvements to the school. These include the building and equipping of a new Life Skills Unit, the creation of an interactive room, incorporating specialised equipment and an extension to the hall.

• To develop each pupil’s physical, intellectual and emotional competence in order to achieve as independent a life as possible.
• To increase each pupil’s ability to communicate his / her needs, feelings and desires to a level that can be understood by others.
• To establish autonomy for pupils through programmes of study that are age appropriate and individually designed to provide breadth, balance and relevance. The programmes will develop each pupil’s educational potential through progression in the school’s curriculum, which will take into account the National Curriculum.
• To recognise that for pupils with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties / Complex Learning Difficulties that it may be necessary to plan for dependency.
• To foster enjoyment of the learning process and provide a structured and stimulating environment designed to increase each pupil’s social, intellectual, moral and spiritual development.
• To encourage mutual respect between individual and groups of pupils by respecting and encouraging democratic principles.
• To maximise each pupil’s learning opportunities by developing a partnership between home and school in order to share knowledge and experiences.
• To develop inclusion for all our pupils at an appropriate level.

The school offers each pupil access to a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum, which is based on the individual needs of each pupil. Included are basic skills, National and Multi-Sensory Curriculum subjects presented in a meaningful way. The curriculum is appropriately matched to the age of the pupil ensuring that:

• A positive approach to teaching and learning is adopted by the school with an emphasis on pupil achievements
• We build on individual strengths in order to motivate and reward pupil and measure progress in relation to the pupil own level of development and functioning.
• A combination of teaching methods are used throughout the school in order to achieve these goals in the most effective way. For example, teaching subject areas as discrete subjects, group work or covering more broadly based experiences and activities in the form of topic work or individually structured behaviourally based teaching programmes.
• The school makes positive use of the assistance of qualified Special Support Assistants who work closely with the class teacher in order to offer quality teaching and learning experiences for all pupils.

Extended educational visits are an important element of the school year. During the year, the pupils are offered opportunities to make external visits e.g. Live Music Now. The school also makes use of the Moorland Home at Whitworth for groups to use for a week’s holiday. The school has a minibus which is used to support visits out of school. Use of New Opportunities funding and funding from School Achievement Awards have given us the opportunity to develop activities in the lunch hour and an After School Club. Lunchtime activities include music and sport. After School Club is run every Thursday throughout the term 3.45 – 5.00. It is organised by three Special Support Assistants. Activities include art, music, computers, sport, multi-sensory, storytime to name a few.