School Awards

NATIONAL AUTISTIC SOCIETY, AUTISM ACCREDITATION SPECIALIST AWARD – May 2024

• ‘Autistic students are treated with dignity, status and respect and are provided with meaningful positive feedback to boost confidence, self- esteem, and self-worth. Precise and genuine praise was offered.
• ‘Each autistic student is supported to socially interact with peers during lessons. Many observed lessons involved students being supported to take part in structured and purposeful social skills activities where shared attention, turn taking, sharing, and group learning was supported effectively by staff.’
• ‘Excellent lessons were observed where students learned about relationships through a story supported by relevant props to learn about feelings. Adults joined in during art activities whilst delivering excellent total communication support. Students learned about team work and working together in Lego therapy and reflected on their roles and paid each other compliments.’
• ‘Staff are confident in talking about how they support autistic students in becoming more independent and developing daily life skills and what progress has been made. Staff gave examples of students participating and performing at the Shakespeare Festival where they created scripts and designed costumes.’
• ‘Staff provide the right level of support to enable each autistic student to experience a sense of completion and success whilst helping them develop skills of self-reliance and resilience. Good questions were asked and processing time was given to help students answer questions verbally or using visual supports. These were used effectively to encourage students to actively express preferences, make choices, and take decisions.’

GOLD ARTSMARK AWARD, (ACCREDITED BY ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND) – 2023/24

• 'Riverside School is committed to the arts. Diversity is celebrated and promoted with creative practitioners working in school (eg jazz musicians/photographers) coming from many backgrounds.’
• ‘The curriculum is differentiated to meet the broad range of needs and students have the opportunity to achieve Arts Award, NCFE and ASDAN accreditation. Where appropriate, attention is drawn to the creative and cultural industries as career choices. For example, the careers programme included organising a studio visit to BLINK for a student interested in animation.’
• ‘Your many collaborations with a range of arts providers such as Shakespeare Schools, London Symphony Orchestra, English Touring Opera, Oily Kart, Groundswell Arts and Young V&A support you in offering quality arts, cultural education and arts experiences.’
• ‘Students engage with the arts at their own pace, exercising choice in which arts experiences they wish to pursue such as choir, drawing club or weekly dance sessions led by Solstar.’
• ‘Students have opportunities to perform, see performances, display their work and share this with a school in Slovenia.’

 SCHOOL GAMES GOLD MARK – 2023/24

• The School Games (Gold) Mark is the sports award that recognises effective engagement (provision and uptake) in school games against a national benchmark regarding keeping young people active.
• Schools have to demonstrate:
  how they maintain and grow school engagement in school games and at least 60 minutes for each young person weekly.
• how they create positive experiences to ensure physical activity and competition reflect motivation, competence, and confidence with clear intent.
• that they have a clear focus on how secondary schools are engaging in school games.
  how they develop a positive character outlook for young people.
• how school games make a meaningful difference to the lives of young people.