Curriculum

NSTC is an alternative setting where every child is nurtured and coached to develop the skills required to have a successful education, in addition to refining their social, emotional skills and nurturing positive relationships with others.

Our ethos is built around a shared set of core values that underpin all aspects of school life. These values guide our students in their learning, personal development, and interactions with others, helping them to grow into confident, compassionate, and aspirational young people. 

Our Core Values

Respect- We value ourselves, others, and the world around us

Resilience- We embrace challenges and learn from our experiences

Compassion- We show kindness, empathy, and understanding towards others

Aspiration- We strive for excellence and aim high in all that we do

Together, these values create a culture in which every student is encouraged to flourish, succeed, and make a positive contribution to society. 

We assess students using IXL and teacher assessments, at the start of their NSTC journey, and throughout.  This means we know what academic gaps have formed as a result of poor attendance, lesson refusal, suspension, low self esteem and the wide variety of other factors that mean students aren't always present, physically and emotionally in class.  We use this information to target our learning opportunities, enabling students to make progress, communicate their difficulties with key staff in their mainstream schools and build confidence to be able to engage in education meaningfully. 

A well considered and constantly evolving curriculum is central to the work we do at NSTC.  Incorporating Therapeutic Thinking principles into everything we do means we have both our academic curriculum as well as a behaviour curriculum where we teach students the behaviours we want them to display: