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Medical Needs Teaching Service

Leeds Children's Hospital

The Secondary Curriculum at Leeds Children’s Hospital

We aim to ensure that all children and young people have access to, and opportunities to explore, a breadth of topics across the core curriculum subjects. Continuity of learning enables children and young people to make progress, thereby ensuring they can transition back into school with confidence. Personalised learning pathways aim to motivate students of all abilities and aptitudes, adapting teaching responsively to meet individual education needs.

MNTS aims to celebrate students’ success and recognise achievement, emphasising the importance of wider, holistic progress and developing self-motivation. We also place emphasis on fostering creativity, imagination and originality, for example through practical experiments, reading widely and using analytical skills.

The Primary Curriculum at Leeds Children’s Hospital

First and foremost, we aim to involve children very quickly with engaging learning activities. This enables the child to relax through focussing on and being absorbed by the activity. We continuously assess children through a process of ongoing formative assessment within each lesson: a process which is ‘hidden’ within the learning interaction and usually not evident to the child but nonetheless supports their progress.

Through 1 to 1 teaching we carefully tailor the activities to the child and use a range of modelling, scaffolding and withdrawing support sensitively to pitch the challenge appropriately in each lesson.

We carefully monitor progress and devise next steps on a daily basis for each child. Our focus within the curriculum is therefore prioritised for each child based on their particular academic needs.

In summary, the primary curriculum at Leeds Children’s Hospital follows a cycle of ENGAGEMENT > ASSESSMENT > PROGRESSION. This cycle operates within each lesson and across series of lessons over days, weeks or months, according to need.

The PMLD curriculum at Leeds Children's Hospital

The Medical Needs Teaching Service provides pupils with PMLD with a broad and balanced age-appropriate curriculum. The MNTS provides a multi-sensory curriculum in terms of topic content which is developmentally matched to the pupils’ needs. 

Specialist communication approaches are used to encourage responses including the use of Intensive Interaction and Tacpac and skills such as gesture, facial expression, and aids such as Switches. 

Use of a Multi-Sensory Room encourages switch access and communication skills using tactile, kinaesthetic, auditory, visual and olfactory stimuli. 

We work with the Fundamentals of Communication as laid out by the Intensive Interaction Institute and wherever possible we work on the targets that are set within the EHCP.