Our curriculum
Built around the learner
An in-person school in Chester, with blended options when needed. Every timetable built around the learner, mapped honestly to real qualifications.
Our approach
Who they are, before what they need
Every young person begins with a proper look at who they already are. EHCP, previous school reports, functional maths and English, behavioural insight, and, perhaps most importantly, time simply spent alongside them. The plan comes out of that. Never in first.
Stage, not age. If a learner needs to consolidate before extending, we consolidate. If they’re ready to accelerate, we get out of the way. The framework flexes. The destination: a real qualification, a real next step, does not.
And it is reviewed, honestly, as they change. What worked in September may not hold in February, so we watch the week rather than the plan on paper; attendance, regulation, the small signs of confidence returning, and adjust with the young person, their family and the professionals around them. The plan is a living document, not a promise made once and defended.
Six areas, one plan
A framework, not a formula
A good curriculum is not a straight line. We hold separate frameworks for ages 11–16 and 16+, but the ages are a starting point, not a gate – a learner meets the curriculum at the stage that fits them.
Six areas of learning
Ages 11-16
- Personalised per learner
- EHCP-aligned
English
Reading for meaning. Writing to be understood. Speaking with the confidence to be heard. Delivered 1:1 or in small groups, always pitched at the right level.
Maths
Functional maths, built on the baseline gaps first. Number confidence. Real-world problem solving. Then, and only then, the formal qualification.
Digital Skills
Employability-focused digital literacy. From files and folders to safe online life, IT support, coding fundamentals and creative tech.
Movement & Wellbeing
A daily anchor. Physical activity, regulation strategies and mental-health-informed practice, woven through the whole day, not bolted onto the end of it.
PSHE & Life Skills
Cooking, budgeting, transport, healthy relationships, rights and responsibilities. The practical scaffolding of adult life, taught in the school day.
Extracurricular
Hobbies, community trips, forest school and the What’s the Point projects, where a young person very often first finds their thing.
Preparing for adulthood
Ages 16-19
- Personalised per learner
- EHCP-aligned
Employability
CVs, applications, interview practice and workplace communication. The quiet habits, timekeeping, reliability, self-advocacy, that make an employer say yes.
Moving On & Life Skills
Budgeting, transport, tenancy basics, appointments and healthy relationships. The scaffolding of adult life, taught deliberately rather than assumed.
Health & Social Care
An introduction to a real sector, safeguarding, values, communication and roles, for learners considering care, support work or a college pathway.
Hospitality
Kitchen skills, food safety, front-of-house and customer service. Practical, hands-on learning with recognisable next steps into college and local employers.
English & Maths
The literacy and numeracy employers, colleges and landlords actually ask for. Pitched to the learner’s current level and worked towards a recognised Functional Skills qualification.
Digital Skills
Everyday digital confidence, email, documents, online safety, admin platforms, plus the tech that opens doors in modern workplaces. Practical, not performative.
The hyflex model
In person by default. Blended when it helps.
HyFlex Academy by The Greenhouse is a provision you come to. Our Chester Centre is where most learners spend most of their week. The blended options exist so a young person who can’t yet get through the door still has a way in, and a route back.
Education centre
Our staffed base. Small-group teaching, therapy input, coaching and workshops; the most structured of the four rooms, and often the one a young person grows into.
Online learning hub
Live-taught lessons and a self-paced library. For young people who need home as their steady place while the relationship with school is being rebuilt, day by day.
At home
1:1 support in the young person's own environment, delivered by a named key adult. Often the first step back after a long absence, the door before the door.
Outdoors
Forest school, movement, community learning. Frequently where re-engagement starts, long before anything academic clicks into place.
Recognised qualifications
Real accreditation. Real next steps.
Qualifications through City & Guilds, ASDAN and NCFE, chosen because employers, colleges and apprenticeship providers recognise them, and because our learners deserve a route to the same destination as everyone else.
Vocational and functional-skills qualifications recognised by employers, colleges and apprenticeship routes across the country.
Personal, social and employability qualifications with the breadth to meet a wide range of learners, and the credibility of a real certificate at the end.
Including NCFE Level 1 Employability Skills, the anchor qualification for many of our 16–19 learners, and a genuine springboard into what comes next.
Four curriculum pillars
Each pillar is a destination, and the starting line for the next
Nothing sits in isolation. Each pillar strengthens the one before it and opens the door to the one after, so a young person leaves with more than a certificate.
Core curriculum
Maths, English, Digital Skills, Movement & Wellbeing, PSHE & Life Skills. Baseline-aligned, qualification-mapped, and paced to the learner in front of us.
PSHE & life skills
Cooking a meal. Reading a payslip. Booking a train. Naming a healthy relationship when you see one. The practical scaffolding of adulthood, taught deliberately.
Extracurricular & hobbies
The activities where a young person finds their thing, often the very first quiet sign that engagement is returning. We always pay attention to it.
"What's the point" projects
Learner-chosen projects that answer their own question about why any of it matters. Cross-curricular by design, unignorable by consequence.
For local authorities
Bespoke, EHCP-led placements for young people who need alternative provision. Referrals reviewed personally by our SLT. A costed plan agreed before day one. Termly evidence of engagement, re-engagement and outcomes, never a black box.
For families & carers
No forms first. We start with a conversation, about your young person, not their label, and only once we understand them do we start talking about timetables, transport and what a first week might actually look like.
How admissions work
Unhurried. Honest. Personal.
Every step is a conversation, not a form. Six unhurried moves from first enquiry to first day, shaped around the young person, not around our diary.
01
Initial enquiry
A short call, or an email. We ask about the young person, not paperwork, and share honestly, in that first conversation, whether HyFlex is the right fit for them.
02
Documentation
EHCPs, review notes, previous school reports and any specialist input come to us. We read them properly, cover to cover, before we meet.
03
Review & matching
The SLT meets to consider fit: pathway, environment, staff match, and most importantly, whether we can genuinely serve this young person well.
04
Pre-placement
A visit. A walk. A video call. Whatever pace the young person can meet us at. No pressure to commit, we’re getting to know each other, and that takes as long as it takes.
05
Placement planning
Baseline assessments, EHCP alignment, a costed and dated plan, and a named key adult who will be theirs. Agreed together with the local authority and the family.
06
First day & beyond
A gentle start. Weekly key-adult reviews for the first half-term, then half-termly outcomes evidence for the Local Authority, for as long as the placement runs.
Get in touch
Tell us about the young person
Prefer to talk it through? We’re happy to take a call, answer an email, or arrange a visit at a pace that works, for the young person first, and everyone else after.
- 01244 604 063
- [email protected]
- www.ourgreenhouse.co.uk
- Chester, Cheshire
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