The Darwin Centre for Young People is a Tier 4 adolescent inpatient unit based in Cambridge, offering assessment and treatment to young people (13-18) with severe mental health difficulties.
Here at the Darwin Learning Centre we are passionate about the role of education in recovery, providing bespoke quality first teaching to prepare our learners for independent and successful lives.
We believe in the importance of nurture on the development of wellbeing and this approach is the foundation upon which we base our child centred curriculum design.
At admission each learner will have an induction with the Teacher in Charge who will collaboratively create an Individual Education Plan (IEP) taking into account their prior school experiences and liaising with their home school to ensure that young people are able to maintain their academic studies and reintegrate post discharge.
As SEND specialists we are passionate about bespoke learning and plan as a team each young persons’ learning journey removing barriers, adapting where necessary and contributing to assessments as appropriate.
We believe in the potential of our young people to succeed and strive to design a personalised, robust curriculum to stretch and challenge them academically to achieve their absolute best.
We are a registered exams centre and learners can sit their GCSE, A Level and BTEC exams.
Students follow a varied and exciting curriculum including English, Maths, Science, Art, RE, PSHE, History, Geography, Languages and Music.
Learners go on to Sixth Form College, Apprenticeships, University study and employment.
The learning centre is staffed by a full time Teacher in Charge who is an English and SEND specialist, their role includes reporting, advocating and liaising on behalf of the young people.
In addition we have an outstanding teaching team comprising of a Lead Teacher for English, Maths, Science, Humanities and Teaching Assistants. Our teaching team are friendly, patient, knowledgeable, experienced and totally inclusive.
We have three teaching spaces separate from the main ward and this offers a safe and stimulating environment to learn. We offer a broad and balanced curriculum which will be tailored to your specific educational journey. We may support you to follow your home-school curriculum or we may create a curriculum to best support you at the stage of your educational journey that you are at. Our students are very diverse and some are following a traditional academic pathway and we can support them to prepare for public exams and the next stage of their education. Others have struggled to engage, so we help them to figure out educational or training goals and support them by teaching foundational skills, preparation for adulthood and a through the offer of a robust careers programme. All students access PHSE, art, careers and pastoral care. We believe that education can transform young lives and offer young people a really positive experience of school adapted to their needs.
Students learn on a one to one basis or in small groups as appropriate. We pride ourselves on the positive relationships we build with our young people and are totally determined to help them achieve their goals, promoting resilience when things do not go as planned and celebrating successes when obstacles are overcome.
The school day runs from 10am-12.15pm in the morning and from 1.30pm-3pm in the afternoons from Monday to Thursday and from 10am-12.15pm every Friday.
