Curriculum at Scoil Áine
Pupils who attend Scoil Áine School exhibit a wide range of mental health and educational needs. The nature of these difficulties often result in delayed educational engagement and academic progress, alongside underdeveloped social-emotional skills, which are necessary to springboard pupils back into a fulfilling life.
Scoil Áine therefore seeks to provide a wide varied and flexible curriculum that addresses the needs of our pupils. We aim to:
1) To provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and achieve
2) To promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and prepare all pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life.
The curriculum at Scoil Áine is delivered in a small group setting. We have five Special Education Teachers which includes a teaching principal. All Senior Primary National Curriculum subjects are taught and the following Post Primary subjects:
- English
- Irish
- Maths
- Modern Languages
- Science (Junior Cycle)
- Home Economics
- History
- Geography
- Art
- Physical Education, Health and Leisure
- Digital Learning
- SPHE
- RSE
- Social and Life Skills
- ISL
Some pupils also have independent study lessons, where they can continue additional subjects on offer through their mainstream school.
Physical Education, enrichment and personal development plays an important role in improving wellbeing, mental health and social skills. Personal development is delivered through a range of enrichment activities including:
- Gardening
- Cooking
- Forest Walking
- Collaborative Games
- Board Games
- Sport
- Music, Art & Drama Blocks
Transition Year and Leaving Cert Applied is also offered.
The school student council is involved in the design of the enrichment curriculum.
Students’ length of stay and academic needs vary enormously but the school works hard to
re-engage them with learning.
Students are not always well enough to sit the full range of Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate exams, with this in mind the school is careful to set realistic and personally tailored targets. Our students are guided to study a range of subjects and are entered for appropriate examinations.
We offer all the subjects at Senior Primary and a range in Post Primary along with life and functional skills. We also offer the LCA programme to a cohort of our young people as outlined in our schools policy.
All students are taught in small groups which are organised based on their own learning outcomes. We assess all students when they arrive at the school and this supports our discussions with students when setting personalised targets.
We regularly review our timetable to reflect the needs of the current cohort and individual learners. Students receive regular feedback on their progress and parents/guardians are involved with the implementation of their child’s School Support Plans.