The school provides a stimulating, supportive and secure environment for all students, including those for whom learning presents some challenges. The aim of the Inclusion Departments is to work with the children, their parents, their teachers and any external specialists to ensure that each child fulfils their true potential.
Inclusion Departments
The Inclusion departments are divided into a number of key areas, each of which works closely together, as well as collaborating, where necessary, with our Counselling and Medical teams:
- Bayt Al Hikma (Stretch and Challenge)
- Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
- English as an Additional Language (EAL)
- Occupational Therapy
- Speech and Language Therapy
Bayt Al Hikma
Bayt al-Hikma at ICS pays tribute to this centre of learning from the Golden Era. Open to all, it will focus on rewarding academic success, encouraging intellectual exploration, and providing opportunities to extend our students who want to learn deeply. We believe that every child can thrive if we provide the opportunity and support for excellence. Lean more about Bayt al-Hikma.
SEND (Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities)
The school supports students with a full range of special educational needs through the inclusion department, including Dyslexia, Down's syndrome, Autism, Dysgraphia, and sensory integration processing difficulties. Our provision is both in class and out of class, provided by a team of over thirty-five trained staff, one of the largest teams of specialists working in any International School in the world. We design bespoke support programmes for individual needs based on international best practice, as well as working with and advising teachers, and modifying and adapting the curriculum to ensure every child is able to excel. We provide a variety of support levels, and adopt a multimodal approach to support. We also email parents who pay for additional support weekly, providing differentiated homework and an update on the week.
We have an outstanding EAL (English as an Additional Language) department which offers support both during English-based subjects and throughout the curriculum, but also through pull out classes in order to maximise a student's rate of learning. This large team works across the school in order to provide subject-specific, as well as general, support.
We have a fully equipped sensory room and a team of highly-trained occupational therapists who provide support both inside and outside the classroom. They provide whole-class instruction, focussed interventions, and one-to-one support in a full range of occupational therapy areas, including life skills, handwriting, gross and fine motor skill development, and sensory integration processing.
We have on site speech therapy provided by the Seeds of Hope centre. This external partnership provides full-time support in school, both in pull-out sessions and in-class at parental request.