Academic support – Senior
Achieving full potential, as independent and confident learners
Supporting your academic journey
Our Academic Support (AS) staff help all pupils to gain the skills and tools they need to achieve their full potential across the curriculum, as independent and confident learners.
How we work
We work closely with teachers to support the specific areas pupils are struggling with. This includes individual subject teaching (pre-teaching or revisiting subject content) and focusing on key skills. We identify strengths and learning styles to tailor our provision. Baselines are set to measure and demonstrate progress.
Typically, we work with groups, pairs or in a 1-to-1 one format. This can be in or out of the classroom, depending on the nature of support required.
Senior School support
Typically, First to Third Form (Year 7 – 9) support is based on underlying skills (spelling, reading, writing, Mathematics) as well as support for specific subjects such as Science. In the GCSE years, our support tends to focus on exam-based skills (essay planning and writing, and revision technique), and specific revisiting of key information in subjects.
Alongside this, one-off single sessions around a specific skill (how to plan an essay, exam command words, decoding an exam question) are offered to any pupil who requests it. Other support offered within the Department centres on self organisation, self help skills and social skills for pupils identified on the Autistic spectrum.
Information is regularly requested from and shared with subject teachers. Parents are fully involved in the initial implementation of support and the review at the end of a specific intervention. Pupils who arrive at Kimbolton with county-funding (typically with medical issues rather than academic ones) are also supported. We liaise with the various agencies, including the county, to ensure appropriate support is provided.
Some pupils are taught in one-to-one sessions (targeted, individually planned and delivered lessons which incur an extra charge to termly fees bill) and / or in small groups in or out of the whole class setting.
Working with parents
Parents are fully involved in the implementation of support and the review at the end of a specific intervention. Pupils joining Kimbolton with county-funding (typically with medical issues rather than academic ones) are also supported. We liaise with the various agencies, including the county, to ensure appropriate support is provided.
We have a qualified, experienced team of staff with expertise in supporting pupils with a variety of specific neurodiverse learning difficulties, for example dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, Asperger’s and ADHD.
All our teaching staff recognise that every child has a favoured learning style. We encourage pupils to recognise this, enabling every child to reach their full potential by understanding the learning process as an explicit part of their education. Key to this is working with the pupil to create and effectively use a ‘toolkit of strategies’ to navigate round any underlying difficulty.
We invite parents to contact Academic Support for advice or to discuss an assessment or referral. Requests for a diagnostic in-house assessment or to seek external more detailed assessment advice (typically using an independent Educational Psychologist known to the school) are organised through the Head of Academic Support. Any advice or specific recommendation from such an assessment (internal or external) is always circulated to all the teachers involved in teaching the pupil.
