Dorothy Barley Junior Academy has achieved the Inclusive School Award with Flagship status.
Calm and Nurturing Environment
Dorothy Barley Junior Academy greets visitors into a calm and nurturing environment with efficient and courtesy safeguarding procedures. The school is on a site shared with the maintained infant school in a single-storey building with classrooms organised off a u-shaped corridor. The school has an ARP for complex needs that is well-established. However, until recently the ARP provided for children with moderate to severe learning needs, but a change of criteria was made by the local authority.
The balanced and considered approach allows for teacher autonomy whilst maintaining a strong whole school purpose such as a focus on social, emotional and mental health. Pragmatic and practical logistics incorporate provision for intervention, teaching and learning in mainstream and integration opportunities for the children within the ARP.
The Assistant Headteacher for Inclusion, who is also the SENCo, met with the assessor and gave an overview of the context of the school. The SENCo has been in place for three years and the other members of the Inclusion team are longstanding. The demographics of the school, and the borough, have changed significantly in recent years. The previous demographics had been of a generational nature and the new intake is continuing to develop a multicultural community where there are about 60 languages spoken. The team talked about the new intake including recent admissions from Nigeria and the Ukraine. This brings novel and ongoing challenges that the school and staff are required to respond to through the provision on offer.
The school’s profile of need consists of the ARP with 12 children with education healthcare plans, EHCP, one child with an EHCP in mainstream and 62 (18%) on the SEND register. Primarily the broad areas of needs are social, emotional, mental health and cognition and interaction. The school has a high level of pupil premium and free school meals. These needs are met within a building with the capacity for 4-form entry that is currently 3-form on roll except in Year 6.
On joining the SENCo on gate duty at the start of the school day the children and their families were observed to be happy to be coming to school. They were unphased by the presence of a visitor on the gate in the morning. All the senior leaders were outside to greet the community.
Support is Routinely Given
The Assistant Headteacher for Inclusion, Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead and Pupil Welfare Officer Behaviour and Attitudes Leader, who form the Inclusion team, met with the assessor of the Inclusion team.
They gave an overview of the provision across the school which consists of whole class phonics in Year 3 as a response to the impact of the disruption of the pandemic, the child-led THRIVE provision to raise self-esteem and address social, emotional and mental health needs, pastoral and community work to support prevalent issues such as domestic violence, addiction, unemployment and illiteracy both within the families that speak English as a first language and that have other home languages.
Support is routinely given by the pastoral staff with the completion of forms and accessing services alongside a community fridge that started as part of the harvest festival and a pre-loved uniform sale that is given an ecological focus.
Rigorous Safeguarding and Provision
The Inclusion team meet half termly to discuss vulnerable children and utilise a range of online systems to ensure rigorous safeguarding and provision, these include CPOMS online safeguarding system, Arbor as the management information system and Edukey’s provision mapping online system. Teachers review the children’s individual education plans half termly. However, this is an area that the SENCo, through ongoing quality assurance, has identified as requiring development. She discussed ways forward including bringing cognition and learning targets into the school’s universal system for target setting, review and investigating how behaviour plans could fit into a holistic approach.
Staff have received training on adverse childhood experiences, ACEs, and an audit of the children’s vulnerabilities revealed that just 13 had no ACEs. Touch points has been a strategy to provide support via self-referral for children to address issues such as anxiety, home stresses and panic attacks. Staff are also able to access an employee assistance scheme. The school receives input from the Educational Psychology Service, with two separate service level agreements for the mainstream and the ARP, an Art Therapist, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, CAHMS, the local authority and the trust. The school has run engagement activities for parents including online safety, arts classes and parents generally engage well with fetes, fairs and attendance at the class assemblies. The school has built on the trust developed during the lockdowns to increase parental involvement.
Every Child Had a Role
The assessor attended the class assembly for a Year 4 class which was well attended. The assembly was used as an opportunity to showcase the classes learning across all the subjects. Every child had a role, these varied and were matched to the children’s aptitudes. The children lead from the introduction and then throughout, read and show their written work, acted, danced and taught the parents maths from the front using a flipchart.
During the learning walk a calm and productive atmosphere was achieved by staff supporting a strong behaviour ethos at every level of the team. This teamwork from the headteacher, through the Inclusion team and to the class teachers and support staff underpins this ethos. It is clear the peaceful purpose of the environment has been established through significant and ongoing work to support this community’s challenges, of which there are many including deprivation and social issues.
Common approaches to, such as display that supports learning, marry with bespoke approaches by class teachers for adaptation and classroom organisation. In each class the conscious layout of the seating was matched to the needs of the children by the class teacher. All the classes were in Maths lessons, and none were in sets.
Children manage their own ‘My Reflection and Targets’ booklet, recording the progress made towards their set targets. Teachers and support staff were well deployed to support learning through challenge and addressing misconceptions.
In a Year 3 classroom, the working white board display on the cupboard doors recapped the key concepts and learning outcomes in Maths over the week. This was a whole school non-negotiable present in every classroom.
In Year 4 teachers had arranged the seating in carefully thought-out groupings, space to work with focus children was structured in a small row of tables facing the teacher, the board and a supportive whiteboard display situated close to the front of the room. In other parts of the rooms small group tables or u-shaped arrangements cater for the differing needs of the child depending on whether group, pair or individual working suited their learning style and needs.
In a Year 6 classroom children who had experienced a conflict and some dysregulation coming in from playtime were seen to now be calm and focused on their work. Where it was still beneficial for children to have concrete resources, these were provided.
In another Year 6 class children were brought together on the carpet by the teacher to address a common misconception. In all the Year 6 lessons the differentiation was present as ‘getting there’, ‘arriving’ and ‘moving on’. All the children were clear on which they were working on.
In the ARP classroom 12 children were provided for by the teacher and two support staff. The staff ratio has decreased slightly, however, a new space for the ARP is in the planning stages to better meet the profile of needs. The range of needs was complex both for individuals and the group as a whole. The majority of the children were diagnosed with Global Developmental Delay, there were also children with Down Syndrome, Autism, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity, and severe Speech and Language Delays. The cognition and learning needs catered for ranges from engagement model, through pre-key stage standards to Year 3 and 4 for some of the older children.
A Maths lesson was in progress during the learning walk and this was in parallel with the rest of the school who were all engaged in a Maths lesson. The staff within the ARP organised the children into 3 groups by profile of need, in this case largely by cognition level. Concrete and pictorial approaches were utilised by support and deepen learning, for example arrays of cubes were displayed on the table alongside the use of the table as a whiteboard. The children were well engaged, and a child was seen to be focused on the task intensely despite later being observed to have a short attention span.
Facilitate Integration
Children in the ARP are integrated into mainstream classes for an average of 10% of the timetable, when staff assess that they can both access the lesson, and it dovetails with the curriculum for that child. Lessons may include subjects such as physical education and art. The SENCo liaises with the class teacher in order to facilitate this integration and teaches in the ARP one day a week to ensure that she has a good knowledge of the children and understanding of their needs. In general, the Year 6 children are integrated for a greater percentage of their timetable.
The ARP curriculum is discrete from that of the mainstream. The class attend trips that are in line with their curriculum and the same aspiration to achieve 11B411 is held as it is for all children in the school. The children are integrated in the playground at play and lunchtime. They eat lunch in the ARP classroom away from the sensory overload of the dining hall.
Throughout learning behaviour and general conduct were strong and supported by confident teachers and support staff. Displays were organised in a whole school policy where celebration displays were presented in the corridors, interactive displays to support learning utilised the white board cupboard and other in class boards and the classrooms also displayed some subject boards. In places hessian backing was used in classrooms rather than single use backing paper. In the main hall the work from the Aspirations Week was displayed, for this event the school had visitors in to talk about a range of careers such as firefighting and construction that included both male and female speakers.
Confidence of the Student Body
A range of children were spoken to throughout the day including a large group selected to meet with the assessor. They were confident and very natural in the meeting and at other times. They could talk at length about what they and others needed from school, how these needs were met, whether everyone gets a chance to join in and what could be better. One child expressed that they thought it was fair to receive one opportunity a year i.e., a part in the Christmas performance or school counsellor, if you wanted to participate.
Another proposed a vote on the whole class reading book. Children were confident to hold opposing views with a child saying that they thought that the purpose of school was the lessons and to be educated, when some others expressed otherwise, they were able to say, ‘Well that is only my opinion.’ At playtime, one of the learning leaders initiated giving the assessor a tour of the playground, further demonstrating the confidence of the student body.
In the Chill Out Club children from Year 6 were seen enjoying exercising choice and social interaction. Art and dance clubs are also available across all the year groups. Pupil voice is gained termly from a randomly selected focus group with an aim for every child to give their view at one point in their school career. Changes are made from this feedback, recently this was the introduction of lunchtime clubs followed up with a ‘You Said, We Did’ assembly.
In meeting the chair of governors, it was a pleasure to hear their story, having been involved with the school and community for many years and in several capacities.
They discussed the numerous changes that they had seen over decades in the area. They talked about how meaningful information was shared with governors, governors’ day when the school was open for them to visit and see anything that they desired to, talking to the children and school counsellors, having lunch with the children and attending the Aspiration Week assembly. They expressed that as a new chair they had been supported by the trust saying ‘they are there for us’ during the current period of turnover of governors.
Since the last visit good progress has been made towards the action plan and the school is ready to move on to new actions in the last year of this project, which they have made substantial plans for.
Our Assessor concluded “It was a pleasure to meet the Headteacher, who has a clear vision of Inclusion for this well-ordered school that is informed by listening to all stakeholders. The vision is understood by the wider team and in place across the setting. We discussed the importance of responding to the changing demographic of the community and the school.
“It was a pleasant and revealing day. The leader’s high expectations in all areas have generated a creative and harmonious place to learn, where pupils are practical and logical. Through teaching and learning initiatives, all stakeholders are committed to SMSC as a priority for this community. This means that the children are happy and secure within an all-inclusive environment. “
Find out more about the IQM Inclusive School Award
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