Chances Ethos
Our Vision
Chances Educational Support Centre is an alternative education service based in Dawlish, Devon. It offers students a tailored education designed to meet individual needs and nurture the skills needed to improve life chances and realise potential. Its highly skilled staff do all that they can to help the students develop their self-esteem, confidence and self-worth, thereby assisting them with their engagement both in the classroom and in their own communities. Chances aims to ensure that the young people entrusted to its care are ready for the ever-growing demands of a complex society.
At Chances we believe that everything we do should be centred around the young people. Our unique blend of education and youth work creates a happy, safe and supportive environment where students can be stretched and challenged academically, have fun, and come to understand the intrinsic rewards of engaging with their learning. We understand that students make mistakes and we support them to learn from them in a school where good behaviour and manners are as important as academic success.
We are committed to improving the life chances of all students at Chances by seeking to remove any barriers to learning but keeping the consistency and fairness that they will need when moving forward. Working together with the students’ ‘home’ schools is very important to us as we know it is essential in helping with a successful reintegration back into mainstream education after we have helped the students find their love for learning once again.
Chances has a strong ethos informed by a set of core values. We believe that learning ‘Resilience and Respect lead to greater Opportunity’.
*Resilience *Respect *Opportunity
Our Chances Promise.
We are a school where students are encouraged to:
Develop skills and behaviours which lead to better learning outcomes
See learning as fun, recognise their own progress and know that they can succeed
Recognise their own talents and strengths and persevere where they experience difficulty
Grow in confidence, know themselves better, develop personal resilience and positively contribute to the life of the school
Keep themselves safe, be respectful of others and their environment
Values & Philosophy
RESILIENCE - Capacity to recover quickly from difficulties
RESPECT - Interacting with fairness, kindness and dignity
OPPORTUNITY - Set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something
We believe that every young person has within them the ability to reach their potential but they face some unique challenges during these times. We work with schools to identify the different ways that we could support both the student and the school at which they are enrolled so that through better understanding a solution can be found to ensure a successful educational journey.
Expertise & Methods
While we aim to help a range of students with varying needs, we have had particular success with young people who:
Have low attendance at school
Struggle with anxiety and/or low mood
Are causing concern as a result of gang membership or similar
Are at risk of CSE
Display challenging behaviours and times of distress
Qualified teachers and highly skilled Youth Workers provide a programme for students who are experiencing behavioural or emotional difficulties and are therefore at a risk of exclusion. Our smaller class sizes and highly-skilled staff team allow us to challenge students who are disengaging from education, identify barriers to learning and equip them with the necessary skills of resilience and self-management that they need to succeed.
The unique and effective combination of education and youth work is fundamental in providing the high standard of education your student deserves whilst addressing the underlying social, emotional and behavioural issues that are impeding their success at school.