Secondary School
The best way of finding out more about the secondary school is by coming to visit . This website gives you glimpses of what we are about, but only a visit will really enable you to see what the Academy is all about. If you wish to arrange a visit please email Education Administration (info@exeterdeafacademy.ac.uk subject title ‘arranging visit to Exeter Deaf Academy’). The secondary school offers a permeable model, where there are varying opportunities to study within local mainstream schools according to the needs and abilities of the student. A full curriculum can be delivered on site, but where appropriate students are able to access specialist courses within other schools with our own staff accompanying them to assist them.
Having established a strong language in the Primary school, the Secondary school focuses on broadening the range of subjects that can now be accessed through this language. The National Curriculum is followed, with the addition of ‘access to learning’ courses and ‘deaf studies’ courses and further teaching in BSL.
For students who join us at secondary school age, they often need to be re-engaged with the whole idea of learning as their previous experience of education has normally been a negative one. There is also a focus on the social and emotional development of the student, with access to specialist support for those with mental health difficulties and also specific programmes on issues such as anger management. We have an outstanding track record in re-engaging deaf students in learning and then going on to achieve excellent results in exams and course works. All students are entered for relevant exams.
The education principles underpin the secondary school provision, as they do with all of the Academy’s education provision. The focus is on providing a curriculum which is relevant and experiential as we know that this is the means for engaging our students positively in their learning. Themed Learning has been introduced to the KS3 curriculum. This replaces the Humanities. Themed Learning incorporates the subjects: Geography, History, RE, PSHE and Citizenship whilst offering additional support to the Science, ICT and Work Related Learning curricula. Themed Learning helps develop our students' Literacy, Numeracy and communication skills and enables all these subjects to be learnt together through focusing on cross-curricular themes such as The Environment, People and Places and Water. We are part of a pilot project linked to the development of the diploma programme for 14-19 year olds.
About two thirds of the students are residential and they live at the school for up to four nights a week. In order to allow for travelling time, the school week starts at lunchtime on a Monday and finishes at lunchtime on a Friday. To make up the hours lost due to travel time, the school day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday is longer.
Students predominantly come from throughout the South West and Wales, although we are now increasingly taking students from further afield.