Head reveals how special needs school is helping children
A DERBY head teacher has revealed how her newly set-up school is helping to bring children with special needs out of their shell.
Maple View School, in Derby city centre, has worked wonders with children who previously struggled in mainstream education.
Head Amanda Grant says she is proud of the work she and her teachers have been able to do, after its original launch was disrupted by Covid-19.
The school opened in June 2020 and has taken in three residential students - who stay across the year - and five day students, who are dropped off by their parents and collected after school.
“What I’m most proud of is that all our children are making progress and Covid has had very little effect on that,” says Amanda. “I think we’re more relaxed as a school about Covid measures because we are used to operating under them.”
After struggling to find an appropriate school, Helen and Hayley, two parents with children at Maple View, have said the school is perfect for their children. Their boys both have autism.
“This school is fantastic,” says Hayley who got her child into Maple View at the beginning of December. “Before he came here he couldn’t read, wouldn’t do any school work at all.
“I’ve tried everything to get him to read and write. He wouldn’t do it with me, then he’s here and now he’s reading and writing, he’s doing numbers, he’s completely turned himself around to where he was six months ago.”
“It’s the support they give the children, you can’t fault it,” adds Helen, who says her child’s verbal communication has dramatically improved since he joined the school.
The school creates a unique environment for its children to ensure that they can flourish. It has eight children but will expand to 16. The four classes are divided into classes of two, two, three and one, as the school aims to give as much support to the children as it can.
Classes are divided by communication style and ability, rather than age, and some higher ability children may take standardised tests but the aim is not to compare them to children in mainstream schools.
Each child receives their own unique plan while at Maple View. For some, this can be formal qualifications, but for the majority of the students it centres around learning a specific skill and developing those skills so that they can be as independent as possible.
Amanda said: “Some function at a very low level so it will focus on communication and our children will communicate in a variety of ways. Someone who uses single signs, we might teach them to do three signs.
“We had one child who came to us at the start who could only use three words, now he can do 70 words and three or four in sequence, which is fantastic. He’ll also have targets for recognising colour, matching shapes.”
The school has continued to have children attending throughout the pandemic because its students would be unable to access online education and would be severely disrupted by these changes.
As a result, staff receive weekly lateral flow tests (tests which give a result in 30 minutes) and parental visits have been stopped until lockdown ends. Amanda says the children are not aware of Covid-19 but that the school is doing everything to keep them safe.
“How do you explain to an 11-year old-child who is functioning with a mental age of 18 months to one year why mummy and daddy aren’t coming every week?”
Residential children have access to Zoom and similar services and have daily contact with parents, to help ease them through lockdown.
Hayley, who lives in Derbyshire and Helen, from Repton, have said both their children suffered greatly before getting their places at Maple View. “My son was saying things like ‘They don’t want me at school because they don’t like me’ and it used to really upset us. It was horrific,” says Hayley.
Both children were out of education for more than a year as their parents struggled to get into a school that could help them. “It was battle after battle, school after school, rejection after rejection,” says Hayley.
“The journey for me and for us as a family has been awful.”
“They make it so difficult,” added Helen. “To try to understand some of the paperwork, it’s not easy. And you’re doing the paperwork late at night because you can’t do it in the day.
“He didn’t have the right support for
two years, he missed out on two years where he could have been having the right support. These children already have learning difficulties and you want them to have the right thing. It’s just barriers, all the time.”
Both parents had to complete lengthy forms explaining why their children required a special needs school, while looking after their children at home. Hayley said: “One of the applications took eight-and-a-half hours and afterwards I had the worst moment because we wrote down everything my child had gone through and then we read through it and we cried. We were heartbroken. It was hell.”
Both believe the impact on their children could have been disastrous without Maple
View. Helen’s child is non-verbal and she was unable to communicate with him for two years and could not get access to the therapy he needed; while Hayley’s child was unable to read or write and struggled at mainstream schools to fit in and make friends.
“You could tell he felt isolated,” says Hayley, “he became quite withdrawn and his little bubbly personality was disappearing.”
The application for a special needs school goes through the appropriate council. We have spoken to Derbyshire County Council to ask why the process is so lengthy and why it took these parents a year or more to get their children into a suitable school. It said: “We are always sorry to hear people have found the process difficult. Every stage is really important to ensure we get this right and children are placed in the best and most suitable environment for them and their families.
“The usual process for an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) as set out in the special educational needs and disability (SEND) code of practice takes 20 weeks without ‘exceptions.’ This involves an assessment of the child’s needs, drafting that assessment into a document that includes a description of needs, the provision required to meet those needs and the outcomes to be achieved as a result of that provision.”
The council said that, after this, the family will consider the document and make possible amendments. At this stage a consultation process begins, with the council suggesting suitable schools. “Delays in this process may occur for a variety of reasons. The local authority always aims to work with families to resolve find the best solution for the young person. In a very small number of occasions where difficulties are encountered then there is a formal mediation process which can be used before needing a tribunal.”
One of the applications took eight-and-a-half hours and we read through it and cried.
Parent Hayley