About Severndale Specialist School

Welcome message from the Headteacher

Severndale is a large special school. It is Shropshire County’s only provision for children with complex needs.

The school opened in 1995 with 20 pupils and 60 staff in 2009 the school will have in excess of 285 pupils and 220 staff.

The growth in pupil and staff numbers has been mirrored by a number of building developments, the largest being an £18m redevelopment of the whole school site.  Severndale is part of the Monkmoor Campus being joined by The Wilfred Owen primary school and the Multi Agency Team for children and families.

We have committed significant resources to train and develop staff, we have established links with training providers at Higher Education level, we are registered as training providers and we have staff trained to deliver courses for Team Teach, Makaton, Elklan and manual handling. As a result of the investment we now have superb specialist facilities for Sport, Drama, Science, Design and Technology, Food Technology, Art and Sensory development.

As a Specialist School for Communication and Interaction and a Leading Edge school we work with our mainstream colleagues across Shropshire to provide advice and support for both staff and pupils to enable pupils to maintain their place in their local mainstream school.

We are looking forward to the next phase of our development and welcome applicants to visit and to join us to enable us to deliver the best possible education to our pupils within the boundaries of the resources we have available to us.

Chris Davies
Headteacher

About the School

‘Severndale is a good school with many outstanding features.’ OFSTED

Severndale Special School is a Shropshire Council maintained school for children with a wide range of learning difficulties from 2 ½ to 19 years attaining from P1 to Level 3 of the National Curriculum.  Approximately 20% of pupils have a diagnosis of ASD.  In 2007 we became a Communication and Interaction specialist school and are one of the largest schools of its type in the UK. We were previously a beacon school and have recently been recognised by a number of awards including Leading Edge, Gold Healthy Schools status and Silver Artsmark status.

‘The headteacher has provided exceptional leadership throughout the school’s challenging development and has nurtured and sustained a strong sense of team with all his staff and governors.’ OFSTED

This is an exciting time for the school as we now have an outstanding, purpose built state of the art building with an array of excellent facilities on offer to both staff and pupils. There are specialist teaching rooms for Art, Science, DT and Food Technology and we have a drama hall which seats up to 100 people. The pupils have access to a hydrotherapy pool, sensory rooms, and indoor and outdoor sports facilities. The school is well equipped for ICT with interactive whiteboards or plasmas in all rooms, PC’s in every classroom, 6 laptop trolleys and a resource room. Teaching staff have their own laptop and access to a PPA room and there is a staff room within each department.

‘A particular strength is in the support and training provided for staff, who are continually developing their skills as teachers and managers. All staff with leadership responsibilities take them very seriously and those with a teaching workload provide good role models for teachers.’ OFSTED

The school is structured into different departments for each age group from the Early Years department through to the KS5 department. Each one has an Assistant Head and a Leading Teacher in order to provide support and guidance to the staff within that department. This support comes in the form of coaching, peer mentoring, joint planning, staff meetings and the benefit of 6 professional development days rather than 5. Training is available on site for Team-Teach, Makaton and Intensive Interaction and other Communication issues, and we regularly invite nationally recognised speakers to the school to deliver training on a variety of subject areas. There are many opportunities for staff to rapidly progress their career at the school and to work across the whole age range.

‘Teachers are well supported in improving their skills through team teaching, performance management and well focused training and professional development opportunities.’ OFSTED