For pupils and students with complex learning difficulties (CLD) who are working consistently and over time to the early reaches of the severe learning difficulties spectrum.
Recognises that there are those at the very complex end of the SLD spectrum who are still ‘learning to be’ rather than ‘learning to do’. Such learners are very likely to have an autism diagnosis, have fixed and limited areas of interest and be behavioural communicators, that is, they will not readily use language as their main means of communication. The depth and complexity of their learning difficulties calls for a separate, though related, curriculum model that is the Informal Curriculum.
The Equals Informal Curriculum is set in the context of Equals multi-tiered curriculum approach, recognising that differentiation from England’s (or indeed any) National Curriculum is NOT sufficient to meet the needs of pupils and students with profound, complex, severe or global learning difficulties.
For these populations, who are all working consistently and over time below or very near the start of their national curriculum, curricula NEED TO be different rather than differentiated, because the way such pupils learn is different, and often very, very different from neuro-typical, conventional developing learners for whom the national curriculum was designed.
