Special school closeup – “If they’re happy, they’ll learn”
Callum Fauser finds out how staff at Market Field School aren’t afraid to think big when it comes to improving SEND provision and overturning preconceptions…
Located in the small village of Elmstead Market just outside Colchester in Essex, Market Field School occupies a sizeable two-storey building, with seemingly all the facilities a KS1-4 special school for pupils with learning difficulties and autism might require.
During a tour of its corridors in the company of teacher Kierran Pearce, we look in on an attentive drama class taking place inside a dedicated studio space, before passing by a cooking class hard at work in a kitchen facility and a science lab, as well as two soft play rooms and two sensory rooms.
Yet Market Field’s 21st century appearances belie how well-established the school is. Originally opened on the same site in 1975, its prefab buildings were designed at the time to accommodate just 60 children.
Over the following decades, additional structures were added to keep up with a steady growth in pupil numbers until the decision was eventually made to relocate the pupils for a year while a new building was constructed and eventually opened in 2015.
Growing demand
Market Field’s executive headteacher, Gary Smith, first joined the school in 1989, before being formally appointed as head five years later – at a time when the school’s future seemed to hang in the balance.
“In the 90s there was a drive to get all pupils into mainstream and close down schools for pupils with moderate learning difficulties,” he recalls. “We chose at the time to simply carry on.”
In 2016 the school converted to an academy, though as Smith explains, the factors at play were somewhat different to the typical conversion story: “After the special schools were closed, LAs were prevented from opening new special schools to increase provision. Our situation’s a bit unusual – most schools become academies to get out of council control, whereas we became an academy because it’s what the LA needed.”
Market Field School presently has 290 pupils on roll, with years 1 to 9 based at the Elmstead Market site and years 10 and 11 attending a separate site, Market Field College in nearby Clacton, alongside a 16-19 cohort.
A 3-19 special school in Witham, Southview School, was recently added to the Market Field family, while 2020 will see the opening of Chatten Free School – a 3-19 setting for children and young people with severe autism and complex learning difficulties.
It’s fair to say that Smith has plenty to keep him occupied. Smith observes that Market Field’s flurry of expansion activity is driven by a pressing need.
“As a county, Essex is doing everything it can to expand specialist provision,” Smith explains. “But we also need to do what we can to improve provision in mainstream schools.”
When I ask Smith what he feels sets Market Field apart from other schools, I’m told “We see ourselves as a training school. We’ve grown our own teachers from individuals who joined us as support staff. There’s a willingness among everyone here to keep doing the best they can and see where it takes them. Our mantra has always been ‘If they’re happy, they’ll learn’.’
Spreading the message
Playing an increasingly important part in those outreach efforts is an initiative set up by Kierran Pearce back in 2012 called the Multi Schools Council.
As Pearce explains, “Our children felt that what was going on in special schools was fantastic, but that they never had the chance to tell other school pupils about it, or make friends outside of these walls. They were also aware that at some point they’d have to enter ‘mainstream society’ – and that if they were to be accepted, they’d need to build a better understanding of themselves among their school-age peers.”
Thus was born the first Multi School Council project – a sports event run by Market Field pupils linked with that year’s Olympic and Paralympic games, which was hosted by Market Field and three local mainstream schools.
“The idea was that our children would lead these sports events and educate the mainstream children,” says Pearce. “There’s this perception that our children are the ones always needing support – when actually, it’s possible for them to provide support to others.”
The event proved to be a success, prompting Pearce and the pupils involved to look beyond sport and apply the same principles more widely. “We’ve touched on a range of different areas since then that have always been driven by the children,” Pearce says.
“We could sit with a group of adults and come up with ideas that will change perceptions of disability within mainstream schools and wider society – but I’m of the view that you should start by asking the children themselves. They’ll come up with ideas and ways of expressing their differences.”
The scope of the Multi Schools Council has grown considerably over the past seven years, to the extent that it now operates as a series of six clusters spread across Essex which meet regularly throughout the year.
According to Pearce, “We’ve held community fairs and talent shows where children from special and mainstream schools have performed on the same stage. We’ve held further sports events and an ‘inclusion week’ where children from Market Field spent time in a mainstream school and children from a mainstream school came here.”
More recently, the Council has embarked on two particularly ambitious projects – a resilience programme aimed at tackling mental health within schools, and an autism awareness programme that sees Market Field pupils visit other schools and talk openly about autism in assemblies and classrooms.
At the time of our meeting, Pearce is on a year’s secondment to focus on developing the Council further still. “Within five years we want to be engaged with every school in the County,” says Pearce. “Currently we’re working with 138.”
No magic wand
As I near the end of my visit, I ask Smith and Pearce whether they can call to mind any erroneous assumptions held by mainstream schools and others regarding SEND provision.
In Smith’s view, “People think that special schools somehow have a magic wand. We haven’t. We just want to make things better.”
For Pearce, “It’s about seeing each child individually. A teacher might observe something that worked for one child with autism last year not working this year. Why? Well, they’re not the same child.
That’s not to blame teachers – during my own ITT there were perhaps two or three days spent on SEND. It’s impossible to cover even the basics in that time, which is part of the problem.”
For Smith, however, the main focus of everything at Market Field, from its continuing expansion to the Multi Schools Council, is employability.
“We surveyed 120 of our former pupils and discovered that just 12 of them were in employment. That’s simply not good enough. People say that your school days are supposed to be the happiest of your life – but they’re not meant to be the only days.”
A school with a view
Members of school staff who happen to have epilepsy supported in just the same way as pupils. In an employment context, staff have the right to reasonable adjustments under the Equalities Act.
Epilepsy is a disability covered by said act, meaning that schools would be required to work with staff to decide what reasonable adjustments might needed for them to be sufficiently supported in their job.
You may need to put a plan in place for what happens if a member of staff has a seizure during the school day, implement an adjustment to the colleague’s workload or make an accommodation for them to attend hospital appointments.
Remember that epilepsy is something that affects people very individually, and that some members of staff with epilepsy may barely experience any regular seizures.
Be aware that as an employer, you have an obligation under the Equalities Act to make reasonable adjustments for any members of staff as required.
