Date: October 2025
Review Date: October 2026
Coordinator: Head
Nominated Governor: Vicki May
Version: v10.25
Refreshed for AI / DfE 2025 / Diamond AI — signed off April 2026
This policy was refreshed on 2026-04-29 to align with DfE Generative AI in Education 2025, ICO Children’s Code, EU AI Act (compliance + extension), UK GDPR / DPA 2018, and to make explicit the link between the institutional Diamond Standard (Safety, Sovereignty, Symmetry, Stewardship) and the relational Diamond AI posture (work with AI; do not offload decisions to AI; do not defer entirely from AI).
Status: live — signed off 29 April 2026 by Proprietor and Governing Body.
1. Purpose & Ethos
The Haven exists to provide a trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming, and relational online education for learners aged 12–17.
Our teaching and learning practices are designed to:
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Create a safe, welcoming environment where every learner feels seen, heard, and valued.
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Focus on learner strengths, interests, and agency as starting points for growth.
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Remove the barriers of traditional schooling by using flexible, hybrid models of live, asynchronous, and project-based learning.
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Build symbolic, emotional, and academic coherence so learners can thrive both within and beyond formal education.
We hold the following guiding values: curiosity, trust, autonomy, and collaboration.
2. Curriculum Intent
We design and deliver a broad, balanced, and flexible curriculum that:
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Responds to each learner’s readiness, style, and needs.
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Embeds academic, creative, technological, and personal development learning.
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Celebrates neurodivergence as a strength and positions learners as edge-sensors in the system.
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Prepares learners for further study, work, and life beyond school by fostering resilience, self-advocacy, and self-awareness.
3. Implementation of Teaching & Learning
At The Haven, teaching and learning happen across three main modes:
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Live (Pencil Spaces): Small-group and 1:1 sessions with subject tutors. Relational presence is key: even silent participation is valued as symbolic charge.
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Asynchronous (Canvas): Structured online courses with creative prompts, flexible activities, and optional assessments, designed to allow learners to revisit material at their own pace.
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Independent Exploration: Learners may request personal Pencil Spaces for self-directed work, side quests, or creative journaling. Mentors support these but not routinely marked.
Tutors are encouraged to adapt materials in real time, co-create projects with learners, and integrate symbolic tools such as glyphons and reflective journaling.
4. Assessment & Learner Readiness
Our approach to assessment is affirming, relational, and learner-led.
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Baseline Assessments: We take a neurodivergent-affirming approach to assessing readiness and skill.
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Aim: not to rank or score learners, but to understand how they think, communicate, and grow best.
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Tools: project-based tasks, creative challenges, self-reflection, and conversation.
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Assessments are **opt-in, co-designed, and low-pressure.
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**Principles for any external benchmarking:
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Always framed as exploration, not diagnosis.
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Paired with creative tasks, observations, and dialogue.
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Learners may opt out or work at their own pace.
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Emphasis on strengths and preferred learning styles, not just “gaps.”
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**Examples of free/low-cost screening tools (optional):
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Dyslexia South – Literacy & Maths Screeners
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Thruday – Neurodivergent Self-Assessments
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Empowerment Passport – *This Is Me Too
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Assessment outcomes feed into learner profiles on TutorCruncher and Canvas, forming a living document of strengths, preferences, and goals.
5. Impact & Outcomes
We measure the success of our teaching and learning through:
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Learner engagement (presence, projects, participation in ways that feel safe).
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Development of resilience, curiosity, and confidence.
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Progress towards learner-defined goals, not just external qualifications.
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Academic achievement where appropriate (Pearson Edexcel IGCSEs, functional skills, vocational pathways).
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Positive post-16 destinations aligned with each learner’s strengths and aspirations.
6. Quality Assurance
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Weekly reflective planning by educators, logged in Canvas.
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Termly learner progress reviews with mentors, parents/carers, and the learner themselves.
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Regular lesson observations and reflective dialogues (peer-to-peer as well as leadership).
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Ongoing CPD focused on trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming, and relational pedagogy.
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Pupil voice and family feedback are embedded into policy updates.
7. Safeguarding, Wellbeing and the Diamond AI Posture in Pedagogy
All teaching and learning practices at The Haven are rooted in safeguarding and wellbeing.
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The Haven Cloud (Pencil Spaces) is staff-moderated and designed to balance freedom with safety.
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Digital wellbeing is taught explicitly, including symbolic literacy and relational use of AI.
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Staff work with parents and carers as partners in supporting learner regulation and safety.
7.1 AI in pedagogy — the Diamond posture in the classroom
The Haven’s Responsible Use of AI Policy v10.26 sets the institutional Diamond Standard (Safety, Sovereignty, Symmetry, Stewardship) and the relational Diamond AI Posture (work with AI; do not offload decisions to AI; do not defer entirely from AI). In teaching and learning practice this means:
- Tutors use AI as a thinking partner, not a marking machine. Drafts, planning prompts, accessibility adaptations, summarisation of own notes, and creative exploration are appropriate. Generating substantive feedback, ranking learners, or making placement/SEND decisions are not.
- Learners are taught with AI, not by it. Where AI is part of a lesson, the pedagogical intent and human framing is explicit. AI outputs are surfaced for critique, not consumed without question.
- Identifiable learner data does not enter public AI tools. Education-tier tools with appropriate Data Processing Agreements are used per the AI policy and recorded on the DPIA Digital Platforms register.
- Categorical AI avoidance is also rejected. For neurodivergent learners in particular, AI tools can dismantle barriers to written expression, reading, and organisation — categorical avoidance would be its own form of inaccessibility. The Diamond posture commits us to engaged use under boundaries, not abstention.
- Consent and refusability are infrastructural. Learners are informed when AI is involved in their learning, opt-out is supported, and refusal carries no penalty.
The Kirsten Roy, Kirsten Roy and the outsourced Data Protection Officer jointly review AI use in teaching and learning termly.