Battledown Centre for Children and Families

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school The leadership team, although new, has worked assiduously to ensure that pupils have a good, rounded, quality of education.

Pupils make at least good progress. Pupils are taught well. Staff and therapists help pupils to be emotionally, and physically, ready to learn.

Communication between the school and families is a significant strength in supporting pupils' personal development and well-being. The governors provide good support and challenge to school leaders and staff. They ensure that funds are maximised to benefit pupils' outcomes, and that features of the school such as the curriculum are improving.

Children in the early ye...ars make good progress in all areas of their learning and development. The school's work to promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is effective. The most able pupils, particularly those in Year 2, do not have enough work that is sufficiently challenging.

This hampers their progress. The assessment of pupils' work is accurate. It is also over complex.

The smaller steps that pupils are making are not used strategically enough by senior leaders to ensure outstanding outcomes for pupils. Leaders are aware that the school development plan, assessment systems and their new roles and responsibilities need to be embedded in order to be more effective.

Information about this school

The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website.

In this special school, all children and pupils are supported by My Plan or My Plan Plus, or have an education, health and care plan. Their needs include profound and multiple learning difficulties, or severe learning difficulties. Increasingly, they have additional complex conditions that provide significant barriers to communication.

A significant proportion who join the school are non-verbal, or have very limited communication skills. Around half have a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder. There are four classes.

Each class is organised by ability and special need. The age ranges in each class are from two to seven years. In some classes there is a greater proportion of older pupils than others.

Very few pupils are eligible for support through the pupil premium. This is additional government funding provided for those pupils who are known to be eligible for free school meals or who are looked after by the local authority. The school provides specialist assessment of children from birth to age seven, covering the whole range of additional needs.

The school provides support for teachers, teaching assistants and early years practitioners in other educational settings. Situated within the Battledown Centre for Children and Families is the Child Development Centre (CDC). This is an early years setting for children with additional needs to attend with their parents or carers from birth to the age of about three years.