The development of life skills underpins everything we strive to do at Samuel Rhodes School. This is represented in our school values of; Independence, safety, respect, ambition, equality and resilience. Students who are neuro-divergent often struggle to notice the social cues that many of us take for granted. It is these social cues that help us transition through childhood, adolescence and into adult hood learning and developing along the way.  

SRS creates opportunities for the explicit teaching of life skills across our curriculum supporting our students to understand the world around them and develop the skills they will need to be as independent as possible in adulthood. Subjects such as food tech lend easily into talking about the life skills we need when working in the kitchen. However, life skills are learnt in all subjects;  

• Music teaches students to understand their own preferences and access appropriate leisure;  

• Maths develops money handling, time and problem solving skills;  

• PSHCE allows opportunities for students to understand the need for personal hygiene, and house hold chores;  

• PE/Dance helps students to develop their physical abilities coordination all of which is fundamental for future life; 

• English encourages students to read in the community, developing their abilities to read and understand signage, menus, contracts etc.; 

• Science encourages students to critically think, problem solve and make informed choices; 

The end goal for our students is that throughout their education they have been supported to learn the skills they will need to be as independent as possible in adulthood. This ranges from independence in dressing and feeding themselves all the way to the skills needed to live as an independent adult managing their finances, personal grooming, and household chores and holding down a job.  

Independent cafe

A key component in the development of life skills in KS5 is the enterprise project known as the ‘independence cafe’. Every Friday morning KS5 students take over the food tech room and produce breakfast for up to 30 members of the staff body. 

Throughout the week KS5 students take the responsibility to collect orders and payments as part of their employability exam work. With the assistance of the admin team the necessary ingredients are purchased on Wednesday and delivered on Thursdays ready for a fresh service on Friday morning. 

To date we have offered a number of different menus including; sausage sandwiches, toasties with a number of options of fillings and more recently fruit smoothies and waffles! To make this happen the students reinvested some of their profits into buying a waffle iron. 

Through this project students are given the opportunity to develop their life and employability skills. Students are expected to meet customer service standards, food safety standards and engage in budgeting, ordering and producing and serving high quality food for real customers.