P.A.L

PAL^® is our own system for maximising individual achievement and learning. Parents send their children to Aberdour because they want them to get the most that they possibly can from their primary education, and PAL enables us to build a bespoke education for each and every child. 

'Finding the Brilliance in Every Child'

The guiding principle is that we place your child at the centre of everything we do for them. That means we manage the educational process, in its widest sense, at the individual child level.

PAL works by:

• recognising the aspirations of each child
• understanding each child's personal learning style
• providing a broad and progressive curriculum which is adaptive to the children’s needs and aspirations, whilst offering a a wonderfully broad range of academic, sporting and extra-curricular opportunities
• actively managing each child's goals and progress, adapting an education so that it stretches and flexes as your child develops.
• focussing on our own three elements of educational development - academic, pastoral and aspirational.

In the area of Academic Development, we have a specially developed P.A.L Curriculum which personalises the educational experience and flexes it to suit the individual child.

For Pastoral Development, we offer a particularly happy, friendly environment, with staff who really care and really know each child, together with highly developed processes for monitoring and supporting each child.  

Aspirational Development seeks to give breadth and encourage children to aim higher and broader, with fun programmes running alongside our Lifelong Learning programme that excite, challenge and stretch them.  These include Star Goals, Stepping Stones, and Aberdour Challenge.

Uniquely, we provide dedicated, specialist staff to manage each child’s progress. We believe that planning and targeting teaching is far more effective than just delivering lessons, so we employ ‘P.A.L Tutors’ at a ratio of 1 tutor to every 6 teachers in Main school

Each PAL Tutor is  a highly qualified and experienced teacher,  whose   sole focus is to plan and holistically manage your child’s progress. Each child is assigned to a P.A.L tutor which means they build a long-term knowledge of him or her over a period of several years, and from Year 2 through to Year 6 they provide each child with an individual plan that covers all aspects of their aspirational development. They liaise with teachers to ensure a bespoke teaching and learning programme that reflects the individual child, they monitor progress and pick up on issues and further opportunities, and they provide mentoring to the child. In short, they steer the child through their school career. Children who join mid- year or who are new to the school, will have  a 1:1 session with  their PAL tutor weekly within the first half term, to support them in settling in to a new school.  

Alongside this, the PAL tutors run bespoke weekly PAL sessions across each year group and actively lead the Lifelong Learning programme for Year 3-6 to ensure the learning programme matches the children’s needs and development.

So, when we say that Aberdour provides a bespoke education, it really does. 

The results are that Aberdour children are self-motivated and feel encouraged and supported, while receiving teaching that matches their abilities and challenges them at every level.. As a result, they build skills, confidence, achievements and capabilities and they enjoy coming to school.

New parents are given a full briefing about how the PAL system works.

In addition to helping children to achieve their full potential, PAL prepares them for their chosen senior schools. The Programme feeds into individually-planned extension lessons which focus each child towards the specific entry, and long-term requirements of his or her first choice senior school including interview technique and exam preparation. Our aim is to achieve admissions success and a happy and successful fit thereafter. 

'Tell me and I may forget. Show me and I may not remember. But involve me and I'll truly understand'   

Aberdour regularly prepares children for over 30 different senior schools, and pupils achieve a high level of academic success. Our pupils have been awarded 52 Scholarships in the past two years alone! We 'Find the Brilliance in Every Child' through our unique P.A.L curriculum and our 'Create, Aspire, Innovate, Explore' programme, providing a truly enriched education. We hope that our Main School video encapsulates how this is accomplished day to day.

 

Personalised Achievement Learning - P.A.L,  is an educational support plan developed at Aberdour School. 

Click here to view our PAL Brochure

PAL® is a Registered Trademark and registered with the UK Copyright Service