Dyslexia Friendly Quality Mark
The Friary School places a great emphasis on ensuring that our students with Special Educational Needs & Disabilities (SEND) make the same excellent progress that their peers do.
Numerically, our most significant SEND needs are related to Cognition & Learning which includes dyslexia and often related barriers including comprehension, processing, and working memory. Consequently, in order to ensure that our curriculum is wholly accessible and engaging for these students we sought accreditation via the British Dyslexia Association’s Dyslexia Friendly Quality Mark.
The Dyslexia Friendly Quality Mark philosophy is that changing practice to accommodate dyslexic individuals results in good practice for everyone. Our respected accreditation provides us with a rigorous framework of support and understanding to ensure that everyone within our school responds to the needs of the dyslexic individual and that appropriate resources and strategies for support are available. This in turn leads to greater levels of achievement for everyone.
The British Dyslexia Association are clear that this award is only issued to schools that can demonstrate that they provide high quality education for dyslexic individuals. Equally, this Quality Mark is a positive statement that lets everyone know that our school is a good place for dyslexic individuals.
This accreditation means that we have honed excellent systems, practices and training to ensure that our dyslexic students, and others with learning barriers, have a personalised provision that helps them to overcome their individual hurdles. Our staff benefit from high-quality training and guidance and their lessons are monitored to ensure that their planning, delivery and impact is of the best possible standard.
We are very much a school that does not hope for success, but rather expects success – and this applies to each and every student. We recognise that hope is worthy, but actual insistence in expectations means no student is left behind, as there is no barrier to learning that cannot be addressed and supported so that potential is fulfilled. This is more than a curriculum commitment to dyslexic children, but rather it is a commitment to all students that they matter as individuals, and that they will be backed on their personal learning journey each step of the way.
Equally, our open provision, our whole-hearted acceptance of need, and our genuine care, means that we model to all of our students that regardless of any barrier, we should all be here to fight the corner of one another. Everyone has needs or disabilities ¬ whether they be academic, mental physical or social – and we can all empathise with one another.
Our dyslexic and wider SEND programme is a high-priority to us and is there to make sure our curriculum provision is wholly accessible and that no student has their experience restricted or narrowed. We have a broad cohort – all abilities, shapes and sizes – but we believe ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ so every child, every need, and every effort is there to be supported, guided and driven to success. There is no priority, because everyone is a priority.
To learn more about our Dyslexia Friendly Quality Mark, please contact Lottie Hearn, Deputy Headteacher, via office@friaryschool.co.uk.
