Starting at a new school is often a worrying and exciting time. Please have a look through here to find resources to support you and your child prepare. We will be adding resources over time, so please do check back to have a look at what else is available. 

If you have specific enquiries about transition, please do email transition@rowdeford.wilts.sch.uk
Miss B Jones

Rowdeford School is committed to serving its community.
It recognises the multicultural, multi-faith and ever-changing nature of the United Kingdom. It also understands the vital role it has in ensuring that groups or individuals within the school are not subject to intimidation or radicalisation by those wishing to unduly, or illegally, influence them. It follows equal opportunities guidance which guarantees that there will be no discrimination against any individual or group, regardless of faith, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, political or financial status, or similar. Rowdeford School is dedicated to preparing pupils for their adult life in modern Britain beyond the formal examined curriculum serving the whole community and ensuring that it actively promotes and reinforces British values to all its pupils. The government emphasises that schools have a duty to ensure that key ‘British Values’ are taught in all UK schools.
The government sets out its definition of British values in the 2011 Prevent Strategy.
The four British Values are: ​

​The school uses strategies within the national curriculum and beyond to secure such outcomes for pupils. The examples that follow show some of the many ways Rowdeford School actively promotes embedded British values. 

The principle of democracy is consistently being reinforced at Rowdeford School, with democratic processes being used for important decisions within the school community. For instance, elections being part of the process for electing School Council Representatives. Pupils have a voice that is listened to through the School Council. The principle of democracy is also explored in History and Religious Education as well as in tutor time and assemblies. Mock general elections support this value. 

The importance of laws, whether they be those that govern the class, the school or the country are consistently reinforced at Rowdeford School. Pupils are taught the rules and expectations of the school which are highlighted by the school code of conduct. Pupils are taught the value and the reasons behind the laws that govern and protect us, the responsibilities that this involves and the consequences when laws are broken. Visits from authorities such as the police within the school reinforce this message. 

At Rowdeford School, pupils are actively encouraged to make independent choices, in the knowledge that they are in a safe, secure and supportive environment. Staff at Rowdeford educate and provide boundaries for pupils to make informed choices, through a safe environment and an empowering education. 

​Pupils are encouraged to know, understand and exercise their rights and personal freedoms and are advised on how to exercise these safely, for example through e-safety sessions during Computing lessons. Rowdeford has a robust anti-bullying policy. 

Respect is a strong part of Rowdeford School. Pupils learn that their behaviour has an effect on their own rights and those of others. All members of the school community treat each other with respect and this is reiterated through its teaching and learning environments.

Mutual respect is embraced throughout the curriculum by providing the opportunity for pupils to express their views in a safe environment, with the school’s aim to ‘develop personal responsibility and respect’.

Tolerance is achieved through equipping pupils with the ability to understand their place in a culturally diverse society and by giving the opportunities to experience such diversity within the school community. The Religious Studies curriculum, which is compulsory for all pupils up to the end of key Stage 4, provides a broad and balanced education on a range of faiths, religions and cultures. The syllabus helps pupils to have a broader understanding of the spiritual, moral and sociological issues and encourages them to think about their own spiritual development. The school has a robust ant-racism policy and uses restorative justice to support pupils.

​Rowdeford School strives endlessly to ensure that its pupils leave with the strongest foundation of values upon which to build a successful life and a successful contribution to our society. 

At Rowdeford School, our Values based curriculum promotes all that we believe in and provides the foundation for living as independently as possible in diverse communities. We are passionate that every child is explicitly taught the values that promote and support successful interactions as well as gaining the skills that lead to independent living, community inclusion and a healthy, happy life. Life Skills lessons are part of the compulsory curriculum because of the importance placed on the development of these skills for our learners; skills learnt are re-enforced throughout all parts of school life.

The curriculum, which includes a rich diet of both core subjects and more diverse subjects, works to ensure that the experience of learning is smooth, and that cyclical learning topics support learners in embedding skills and knowledge into long term memory through ‘over learning’ as well as contextualised opportunities for application. PSHRE, which is compulsory for all students, underpins the core values through explicit references throughout the subject; this is alongside the commitment to values in our assembly programme.  Design and Technology is also compulsory for all students because this lesson supports fine and gross motor skills as well as providing students with very real opportunities for work beyond school. All learners study a modern foreign language at KS3 (and students have an opportunity to study it at KS4) because we know it develops students’ ability to communicate effectively, and also to learn about and appreciate another country and culture; an important part of British Values for Rowdeford School.  Cooking and Nutrition is compulsory for all students because, as well as developing fine and gross motor skills, it helps to develop skills for independent living and a love and appreciation for healthy lifestyles.

Learning outside the classroom (LOTC) is recognised by Rowdeford School as an essential way to bring teaching and learning alive across all areas of the curriculum. Our own experience and wider research tells us that learning in real and inspiring environments increases levels of achievement in academic, personal and social skills. It also supports mental health and well-being, reduces stress hormones and can promote healthy habits and an appreciation of the world around them that will continue throughout adulthood.

We support students to consider different learning opportunities and apply them to real life situations. If students require a more bespoke curriculum, we adapt and tailor it to the needs of the individual. Where students show an aptitude in a particular area, they are encouraged to develop this to the highest level.
Option subjects at KS4 ensure that every student has the opportunity to develop a wide range of skills, reflecting our commitment to develop LOTC and more vocational pathways, whilst retaining the compulsory subjects that support meeting targets within EHCPs and the future aspirations and entitlement for each young person. Work experience in Year 11 further builds on these aspirations and offers students a contextual basis upon which to reflect about their learning.
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The curriculum at Rowdeford goes beyond the academic, and focuses on developing skills for life. Students at Rowdeford have the opportunity to practice and rehearse these skills in different contexts. Everything we do, is designed to support each child towards, as independent an adulthood as possible. We recognize that for each student, this will present different challenges and opportunities, therefore thorough preparation and practice is essential in every subject area as well as ad-hoc learning opportunities. We pride ourselves on the responsive and adaptive curriculum we offer every student at Rowdeford School. 

Phonics and Reading Schemes:
Rowdeford School use Sound Discovery as our main phonics programme.  It is a structured,
multi-sensory, high quality synthetic phonics literacy programme developed by Ridgehill Publishing for the teaching of reading, spelling and writing.  It is suitable for first-time learners, slow-to-start learners and dyslexic learners of all ages, including adults.  However, as no programme is effective with everyone, we also dip into other programmes such as Jolly Phonics and Read Write Inc.
As the reading needs and interests of our students are so varied, we have a range of reading schemes to select from, including non-fiction books.  In addition, we have many books in our library, which have been colour-coded to link them to a reading age.  We also boast a large number of Barrington
Stoke books.  These have been written by well-known authors and have a host of unique accessibility features to make cracking reads accessible to more children including those with dyslexia or visual stress.

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Wherever possible uniform should be purchased directly from our supplier (see button below).  We do keep a small stock of uniform at Rowdeford but this is kept to a minimum due to limited storage space.