Blanche Nevile School

Welcome to Blanche Nevile School for Deaf children and young people. Blanche Nevile School welcomes children from all over London.

Our aim is to ensure that all our children and young people receive the best educational opportunities, so they are prepared to enter the world of further and higher education and work as confident, mature and intelligent young people, ambitious to fulfil their potential and realise their dreams.

We provide a bilingual, child centred education designed to meet the needs of every child. Primary and Secondary departments are co-located with our two excellent mainstream partner schools on two separate sites in the London Borough of Haringey, North London. This ensures that all our children benefit from playing, learning and excelling alongside their hearing peers.

Our high expectations for every child ensures they are given the best opportunity for their future. We want our children to experience success in their academic achievements, as well as in the broad range of extra-curricular opportunities that we provide.

We are fully committed to supporting each student’s emotional and social development and we are proud of the strong care and support we provide. We are delighted that Ofsted have rated our behaviour and safety of pupils as outstanding.

At Blanche Nevile School the child is at the centre of our philosophy to create a safe, positive and effective learning environment in which all members of our community are respected. We have high expectations of children’s social, emotional and academic development. We believe that effective communication, praise, celebration of success and quality teaching and learning will enable each individual to reach their full potential.

Developing Sign Bilingual and Bicultural Education for Deaf Children. Aims for our children:

• Develop fluency of language (English and/or British Sign Language)
• Develop Proficiency in Literacy (English)
• Ensure high expectations of each pupil to enable them to reach their potential in all areas of their development
• Develop a positive self image and identity
• Develop emotional understanding, resilience and awareness
• Develop social communication skills with deaf and hearing peers and adults
• Celebrate and value all successes

Blanche Nevile started the school for deaf children on 14th January 1895 and worked at the school for 30 years.

Blanche Nevile was not only an exceptional teacher and formidable headteacher, she studied new methods of teaching, travelled widely and, through her work with Manchester Leeds University, was involved in training and inspiring a new generation of Teachers of the Deaf.

Our school, which she established, has an unbroken tradition of leadership in standards, in communication techniques and in caring for and valuing every child.

At Blanche Nevile, we provide a broad and balanced curriculum which is interesting, engaging, and provides a range of learning opportunities. We have small class sizes, with a high adult to child ratio. This ensures that lessons are tailored to meet individual needs and that every child receives appropriate levels of support and challenge.

At Blanche Nevile secondary we plan the curriculum to meet the needs of all our children. Students follow the National Curriculum, as well as careers education and personal and social development education. We also focus very specifically on developing literacy, numeracy and ICT skills across the curriculum.

In Blanche Nevile Foundation Stage we follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum, which is the statutory guidance published in 2014. The EYFS is based on four main principles which underpin everything else we do:

Every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured, children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships, children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and /or carers, children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates.

Students learn through their experiences and by being taught. They learn most effectively when they feel valued, when they are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning and when they are actively involved in the learning process. At Blanche Nevile School we use a range of teaching and learning strategies to help students of all ages and needs to increase and maintain their motivation and to create a challenging, stimulating and rewarding learning environment in which each and every student can succeed.

Blanche Nevile Primary follows the Highgate Primary Curriculum (our partner school). This is a Creative Curriculum and is organised into integrated topics. Rather than having timetabled lessons for each subject, our curriculum is taught through topics that cover the national curriculum subjects in a relevant and engaging way. Recent topics include Superheroes, Flight, Explorers and Adventurers and The Circus. We aim to develop all of the children’s unique skills and talents and provide opportunities for everyone to shine.