Kings Meadow School is a primary special academy that is part of the Creating Tomorrow Multi Academy Trust. The pupils who attend have complex social, emotional and mental health as their primary need and other associated difficulties. Many children have attachment and trauma needs and sometimes neurodivergent difficulties such as ADHD.
The majority of our children live in West Northamptonshire and are placed with us by West Northamptonshire Council who are our admissions body. All children who attend our school have an Education, Health and Care Plan.
Relationships are at the heart of everything that we do and we believe that building trusting relationships with adults and helping them to build a sense of safety and belonging in our school is key to enabling them to engage with learning.
Our overall aim is to help all pupils who have previously found school a challenge to become independent, lifelong learners who are able to regulate and manage their own feelings and behaviour. We have an ethos of “Can Do” rather than the children feeling they “Can't Do.”
We believe that behaviour is communication, so we work hard to understand our children and to support them to develop other strategies for effective communication.
We use attachment aware and trauma responsive approaches and we have a Relationships and Behaviour Policy which is firmly rooted in these and takes account of up to date neuroscience.
Kings Meadow School is organised into small mixed age classes, A variety of factors are considered when forming class groups, such as:
- Chronological age
- Developmental stage
- Complexity of needs
Structure and routines throughout the day helps to provide consistency and a feeling of security for the pupils.
The layout of the classroom, organisation of the outdoor learning environment, and provision of resources support inclusive teaching approaches, as well as play and nurture-based approaches.