Admissions

At Ravenshall School all our pupils have an Education, Health and Care plan (EHCP). The school is part of the Kirklees Offer for SEN Provision for pupils with Complex Learning Difficulties from aged 5 – 19 and admissions are coordinated through the Kirklees SENDACT team. A young person is eligible to be offered a place at Ravenshall School if they have an EHCP or are undergoing a statutory assessment of their needs. Specific details regarding criteria admissions are below and are available through the Kirklees Special Educational Needs Team.

Contact details are:

01484 221000

sendact@kirklees.gov.uk  

If you contact school on 01924 456811 we will be happy to help you.

Click here for our Admissions policy.

Ravenshall Criteria

Ravenshall School is a maintained special school for children and young people with complex needs.

Our aim is to provide a specialist educational environment for children and young people who are not able to access a supported place in a mainstream school, despite having received comprehensive provision and support for their complex needs within their previous setting.

Pupils who attend Ravenshall will have an EHCP detailing their SEND, with their main needs identified as being significant cognitive and communication delay presenting in achieving several years behind expectations. Generally, our school caters for pupils who present, at 5 years old, cognitively, as 18 to 36 months and will have a co-morbidity of at least 2 recognised conditions. It is likely that pupils will also have additional needs, e.g. medical issues, motor co-ordination problems, mobility issues, epilepsy, autistic continuum, specific language and/or sensory impairments.

Pupils attending Ravenshall will meet some or all of the following criteria:

• Significant difficulties in all areas of the curriculum in terms of cognition and learning
• Significant issues surrounding interaction and communication
• Significant difficulties with self – care and independence
• Significantly delayed social and emotional development
• A combination of overlapping difficulties and disabilities which results in pupils
• presenting with complex and multi-stranded learning needs
• Significantly high levels of anxiety which need high levels of support from well-trained, professional members of staff.

These difficulties will be present to the extent that children may be unable to access other provision within mainstream schools in Kirklees.

Pupils within Ravenshall will require a highly personalised programme of support, which is specific to their complex needs, focusing upon basic functional skills; life skills; personal and social development; self-regulation and management of their emotions; physical development. This will be delivered in a nurturing environment which sets out to make every child feel safe, accepted and valued first and foremost. Ravenshall has regular access to professionals, for example Educational Psychologist, Speech and Language Therapist, and a Physiotherapist, but also has its own behaviour support team who support academic intervention, nurture intervention, behaviour intervention, speech and language intervention and working with families. This team works closely with teaching staff to ensure students receive an integrated package of support.

Pupils are set aspirational academic and personal targets in order to help them to overcome their barriers to learning. They will work within a highly adapted curriculum which is tailored to meet need: some follow a semi-formal sensory and experiential curriculum which supports those with higher needs; others work within a more structured, low arousal environment with an emphasis on social communication, which supports those with autistic traits; others are more able to access the national curriculum at a higher level and to develop the skills for independent living.

School has a 16 – 19 provision (Preparation for Adulthood), which supports a small groups of more vulnerable pupils from across other Kirklees special schools, who are not yet ready to move on to Kirklees College or other post 16 providers. These young people continue to develop their learning in literacy and numeracy whilst experiencing a wide range of confidence building activities in order to develop their social skills in readiness for moving on to a college setting, further training or employment at the end of Year 13.  The curriculum on offer includes a range of off-site learning environments, where learners meet with members of the public, learners from other provisions as well as accessing specialist centres e.g. Kirklees College gymnasium and Batley Bulldogs facilities.  This curriculum is not suitable for those who may have extreme SEMH needs and require high levels of additional adult support to manage their behaviours in order to keep themselves, other learners, staff and members of the public safe.