Communication

Curriculum Rationale

Explore Pathway

 The Explore Communication Pathway focuses on Intensive Interaction and the development of curiosity as the foundation for learning. Pupils demonstrate emerging relationship skills, responding positively to familiar adults, seeking attention, and accepting adult presence during play. As a result, the curriculum prioritises creating a secure, calm, and predictable environment where trust can develop. Adults use gentle physical support, facial expressions, and consistent routines to build strong connections, supporting emotional security and confidence. Learning is guided by pupils’ interests, with adults carefully following their lead and encouraging opportunities for pupils to initiate interactions independently.

  The curriculum also supports the development of early communication and attention skills. Communication is currently expressed through babbling, vocalisations, gestures, and behaviours, including the ability to refuse, all of which are recognised as meaningful. Adults respond to and model simple sounds, expressions, and interactions to extend communication over time. As attention is brief and may shift quickly, activities are designed to be short, engaging, and sensory-based, helping to build shared attention and engagement. Opportunities for interactive play, turn-taking, and choice-making support the development of social communication, independence, and curiosity, ensuring learning remains accessible, meaningful, and appropriate to the pupils’ developmental level.

Connect Pathway

The Connect Communication Pathway is designed to support pupils with complex learning disabilities to develop functional, meaningful ways to interact with others and the world around them. It prioritises the early foundations of communication, including shared attention, engagement in interactive play, and responsiveness to sounds, gestures and familiar words. Pupils are supported to understand and use a range of communication methods, including objects of reference, gesture, Makaton, and Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS), enabling them to move from pre-intentional behaviours to purposeful communication. Through highly structured, repetitive and motivating interactions, pupils learn to request, reject, make choices, and seek help, while also developing attention, turn-taking and listening skills. The curriculum recognises that communication is multi-modal and ensures pupils can access and generalise skills across environments, partners and contexts, building confidence and independence.

As pupils progress, the curriculum supports the development of more complex communication, including discrimination between symbols, construction of simple sentences, commenting, and responding to questions. Through approaches such as Attention Autism, PECS, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC/ALDs) and Colourful Semantics, pupils are taught to sustain attention in group contexts, engage with peers, and participate in shared activities. There is a strong focus on social communication, including initiating interactions, understanding routines, coping with social proximity, and engaging in cooperative play. By building on each pupil’s individual strengths and stage of development, the curriculum enables them to develop functional communication that enhances access to learning, supports relationships, and promotes greater autonomy in daily life.

Evolve Pathway

The Evolve Communication Pathway is designed to develop pupils’ communication skills from early intentional interaction through to independent, flexible and socially aware communication. It is underpinned by a total communication approach, enabling learners to use a range of modalities including speech, gesture, PECS and AAC. The pathway builds foundational skills such as attention, shared engagement and early requesting, before progressing to functional language development, including understanding and using vocabulary, following increasingly complex instructions, and constructing sentences. Structured approaches such as PECS, Attention Autism and Colourful Semantics support learners to move from single words to extended, meaningful communication, ensuring that skills are purposeful, generalisable and embedded in real-life contexts.

As learners progress, the curriculum places increasing emphasis on social communication, interaction and higher-level language skills. Pupils are supported to initiate and maintain conversations, express thoughts and feelings, ask and answer relevant questions, and adapt communication to suit different situations and audiences. The pathway also develops reasoning, narrative and perspective-taking skills, enabling learners to recount experiences, explain ideas, understand others’ viewpoints and participate in group discussions. Ultimately, the curriculum prepares pupils for life beyond school by equipping them with the communication skills needed to build relationships, access learning, advocate for themselves and engage successfully in their communities.