Penrose School, Albert Street, Bridgwater, TA6 7ET. Tel: 01278 423660 email: office@penrose.somerset.gov.uk

Welcome to Penrose School

We at Penrose aim to provide a stimulating, caring environment within which pupils are treated as individuals, and respected for their achievements. We endeavour to work within the National Curriculum, as we believe in equal opportunity for all, but also offer an individualised programme to meet the specific needs of our individual pupils.

We enjoy and encourage parental involvement in school, teachers and special school assistants find the contact exceptionally valuable.

We encourage local charities and businesses to become involved in projects within the school for the benefit of our pupils. All of the staff and pupils are exceptionally grateful for the support that has been provided by such bodies to enable development to occur at school.

Curriculum

We offer a broad, balanced, relevant curriculum.

All pupils are entitled to access to the full range of National Curriculum subjects. The staff ensure that the pupils are provided with experiences that are relevant to their needs and development.

Wherever possible PMLD pupils are taught  alongside their Key Stage peer group but for some a sensory based curriculum is the appropriate method of meeting their needs, pupils are given the opportunity to experience areas of National Curriculum programmes of study within the Sensory based curriculum.

Life skills are vitally important to our pupils, staff make every effort to cross reference life skills activities with National Curriculum programmes of study.

Contextual Information.

Penrose is a day Special School for children aged 2 - 19 years with severe and profound multiple learning difficulties.

Geographical Location/Catchment Area

Bridgwater is located approximately 12 miles north of the County Town of Taunton adjacent to the M5 motorway. The River Parrett runs through the centre of this one time port. It supports about 35,000 inhabitants and is well known for its Carnival and Fair, the latter being held on the St. Matthews field chartered by King John. Penrose School serves an area from Minehead in the West, South to North Petherton, East to Mark which is situated in Sedgemoor and North to Burnham and Berrow.

Buildings and Grounds.

The School is situated on the western side of Bridgwater bordering open wetland, between the Bridgwater/Taunton Canal and the 'Fairfield'. Built in the late 1960s as a Junior Training Centre the buildings are of pleasant aspect and are well maintained. The grounds slope to the rear of the main building to a hard surface play area.

There is a hall which is adjacent to the school kitchen which is used for games and school meals, etc.

Present and Future Numbers on Roll

The School provides for children aged 2 - 19 years of age with severe and profound, multiple learning difficulties. Currently 42 children attend the school. This number is likely to decrease over the next few years if Somerset LEA's Inclusion Policy is fully implemented.

Staff

Staffing comprises Head, 1 Teaching Deputy Head, and 4.8 assistant teachers.

The school is supported by:

School secretary, 10 full time special school assistants, 14 part-time special school assistants, 4 lunchtime supervisory assistants, part-time Physiotherapist, part-time Speech therapist and part-time Caretaking/Cleaning services.

A variety of other specialist staff visit school during the course of the school year.

Meals are cooked on the premises by a Cook-in-Charge and a General Kitchen Assistant for Penrose and a local MLD School totaling some 100 meals a day. The maintenance of school grounds and cleaning of the buildings are the responsibility of the school being supervised by the Caretaker/Handyman.

Organisation

In September there will be 44 children in the school, spread between 5 classes.

Movement of pupils between the classes is more or less age related, but not necessarily so, dependant on the needs of the individual pupil. These classes are inclusive having pupils with all abilities and disabilities.

All pupils in the school have a Statement of Special Needs, a multi-disciplinary document with input from parents, education, medical officer, psychologist, speech therapist and physiotherapist. A decision on the appropriate school placement is made at County Hall where all the documents are collated.

Supporting Inclusion.

One of our aims at Penrose is to promote links with mainstream schools and provide access for as many pupils as possible with their mainstream peer group.

Somerset LEA - Planning for an Inclusive Society

Access & Provision

Beliefs

• that specialist provision has an important part to play in meeting the highest levels of need and enabling most children and young people to be educated in Somerset.
• the importance of specialist and mainstream provision working together to meet the wide range of needs of children and young people.

Actions

• have specialist provision to meet the highest levels of need only, reorganising and adapting that provision if necessary.
• be clear about the contribution of each type of provision to meeting the needs of all children and young people.
• continue to develop together the positive contribution of specialist providers to support a more inclusive future for Somerset children and young people, and to resource this role as appropriate.

LOCALLY DEVELOPED STRATEGY

Penrose School

Historically we have always had links with mainstream schools with pupils attending a primary school on a regular basis, pupils visiting us to work with our pupils and joint school events.

Over the last three years we have been approaching primary schools which would be local to a child we were trying to place and have been successful each time.

In Bridgwater as an EAZ this has become easier as we now have regular contact with all the heads of the EAZ schools. 6 pupils have now spend at least half a day weekly with their local schools and we hope to start 4 more during this academic year.

Because of the closer contact we are supporting schools with differentiating the curriculum and behaviour strategies by individual teachers visiting our schools, our teachers going out to those schools to assist with the planning and providing some INSET.

We have established a training course of 2 a day once a week for 9 weeks for LSA's working with children with learning difficulties in mainstream schools. This course compliments the 4 day training from the DFEE.

To enable us to support our mainstream colleagues and free up teachers to do outreach work, our classes are perhaps larger than is ideal, but, as a school we have opted for the model we have chosen, to enable us to take a more active role in our community learning partnership that is evolving.

Penrose School, Albert Street, Bridgwater, TA6 7ET. Tel: 01278 423660 email: office@penrose.somerset.gov.uk