Bringing together two schools in one building is a challenge, but when one school has moved in and the other school has not yet arrived, it is even harder. Jan Wiggins, interim head of Churchill Park School in Kings Lynn, talks to Sally McKeown about the issues.
Churchill Park School, King's Lynn: "A beautiful building which is fit for purpose"
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Churchill Park School is the first school for learners with complex needs in Norfolk. It is built on the site of the Ethel Tipple School which catered for children with moderate learning disabilities and will provide for those pupils, plus children from the Alderman Jackson School for severe learning difficulties.
When all the children have arrived, there will be 153 pupils with needs ranging from autism to acute physical disabilities.
The staff particularly appreciate having specialist classrooms for science, art and food technology. There is also a nursery and purpose built facilities for the children’s nurse, the physiotherapist and the speech and language therapists. The school has been designed with wide corridors with enough space for children in wheelchairs to pass one another without any traffic jams at break times.
“It is wonderful to have sports facilities separate from dining facilities,” said Jan Wiggins. “Children in special schools often have ’PE with the peas’ as the school hall is pressed into use for all communal activities”
The pupils from Alderman Jackson School are gradually coming over to use facilities such as the sensory room, the soft play area and hydrotherapy pool. In fact, the sixth form has already decamped to the new school and this has proved very successful.
Easing the transition
When the younger pupils come into Churchill Park, they see familiar faces and they are encouraged to chat with their friends to ease the transition. They also used the new school for the Christmas show so pupils now associate the new premises with social events and enjoyable activities and are becoming more confident about the move.
Jan hopes to minimise disruptions: "We are mingling pupils from the two schools in each year group. To make the process easier we are treating Easter as the start of the school year, so pupils will go into their new year groups in April and stay there for four terms.”
There is a very large staff room with a resource area of similar size where teachers and support staff can do their planning and create resources. While they like the new facilities, there have been some anxieties too. The two sites each have their own deputy head and great care is taken that announcements are made to both sets of staff at exactly the same time to allay any concerns that one site is better placed than the other.
“Staff are in the forefront of these changes,” said Jan Wiggins. “This is the first complex needs school in Norfolk so they have had to learn all the lessons for themselves. No one could tell them how to do it.”
The authority has been particularly supportive. “Norfolk has a great set of special schools and can offer plenty of guidance to the team. For example we needed a behaviour management policy and staff from a local school for pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) has helped us and developed a training pack for our staff too. Another school is helping with a curriculum training pack.”
No more "make do and mend"
They now have a beautiful building which is fit for purpose in that it has been built with the needs of its pupils in mind, instead of evolving gradually with the make do and mend approach seen in so many older special schools. There are still things which could have been done better as Jan will admit: “There is still not enough storage space for pupil equipment,” she said. “Some of our pupils have several pieces of equipment. They may arrive in one wheelchair but spend much of their time in the classroom in a different wheelchair. Then they may need access to a standing frame so they are not sitting down all day. At any one time, two of these pieces of equipment will need to be stored.”
Churchill Park School was being built while Ethel Tipple was still open and this constrained the design. Instead of one building they have a core and a wing: the lower school is in the wing so they have further to travel to facilities such as the pool and this is an important consideration for children who are not very mobile. Also the outside area is rather small, it has a primary area with climbing frames and swings, a secondary area with space for ball games and a very small leisure area.
"More space would have been good," Jan agrees. "A 16-year-old with autism and challenging behaviour needs space to run around in to work off some of his feelings".
ICT issues
There have been some issues with the technology too. Kings Lynn is a marshy area. Part of the budget had to be diverted for piling to support the foundations of the school. As a result, there was less funding for kit. They have made some savings by making the best use of the standard package of ICT which will be offered to all schools. Many of the most suitable elements are for the primary age range but Norfolk has put a lot of effort into sourcing VLE components that offer some kind of meaningful access for children with learning disabilities. The two schools are also providing a lot of legacy kit which fortunately is in good condition. As the funding will not extend to a huge upgrade of equipment, staff will be working with software and hardware which they know well.
There is still a certain sadness about the changes, as Jan Wiggins acknowledges: "There is always a little fear of the unknown and, although we have come a long way since the BSF process started, no one can be 100 per cent certain where we are going. That makes it exciting but also makes everyone a little anxious. Staff were sad to see the old Ethel Tipple building pulled down. If you have spent many years of your teaching career in a school, it is an emotional wrench to see it go.”
Hints and tips
- Keep reminding people that you are the only end user and therefore it must be fit for your purposes. It is not like a shopping mall which has to meet the needs of lots of different groups. Your staff and pupils are paramount!
- Architects come from a different perspective. You need to make them understand what is needed. Don’t say, "it would be good to have windows that cannot be opened from the inside". It sounds as if it is optional. Explain what happens when a child tries to climb out of the window.
- Identify very clearly what your needs are. Don’t give woolly information that might be open to interpretation. For example, in a secondary room say, "I want the children to have height adjustable devices which operate with a range of switches.”
- Try to make the architect experience the issues. Don’t just invite them for a visit. Make them take part in an activity with the children. Make them sit in a wheelchair and try to get through a door or down a corridor at break time.
Sally McKeown is a freelance writer and is an expert in special
needs and inclusion