Welcome to Heart of the Forest Community Special School

Welcome to Heart of the Forest Community Special School

We are a Special school for 2 - 19 year olds based in the Forest of Dean Gloucestershire.


Acting Head Teacher: Nicki Davis
Assistant Head: Helen Few

Our Address:
Heart of the Forest Community Special School
Speech House Road
Coleford
Glos
GL16 7EJ
Phone: 01594 822175
Fax: 01594 826472
Email admin@heartoftheforest.gloucs.sch.uk

Heart of the Forest Community Special School is a state funded co-educational, all phase school catering exclusively for children and young people who have special needs (SEN). The types of SEN the school makes special provision for is wide ranging, including provision for pupils who have:

· Profound and multiple learning difficulty (PMLD)
· Severe learning difficulty (SLD)
· Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
· Multiple Sensory Impairment (MSI)

The school is committed to child centred planning ensuring that the needs of pupils on roll remain central to the manner in which the school is organised. A mission statement has been devised to help enable the further development of the school and ensure that the needs of all pupils are properly catered for. The resulting Mission Statement will be shared with parents, professionals from other services, voluntary agencies and key officers from the LA to ensure that the emerging vision for Heart of the Forest Community Special School was one, which our extended school community could also identify with and help bring to fruition. This Mission Statement has been reproduced below for the interest of prospective parents and other stakeholders. We hope that by reading this statement, prospective members of our school community will immediately begin to benefit from the concept that at Heart of the Forest Community Special School, the needs of pupils come first.

At Heart of the Forest Community Special School we are seeking to ensure that our provision is evidence based, everything we do on behalf of our pupils is informed by research into best practice to ensure that our provision is as good as it can be. This best practice is most likely to be identified in the following aspects of our school's organisation:

·Carefully structured access to the National Curriculum and the national framework of academic qualifications.
·Additional, specialist curricula dedicated to minimising the barriers to learning.
·Staff who are specially trained in SEN and who are often expert in specific areas of SEN.
·Facilities and resources that are designed to be empathetic to the practical implications of different types of SEN and disability.
·Close partnership working with parents and other adults who are key players in the lives of children with SEN.
·Further education provision that prepares young people with SEN and disabilities for a meaningful and rewarding adult life.

Most of all we hope the special nature of Heart of the Forest Community Special School is readily apparent in the child friendly, but purposeful, ethos of the school. At Heart of the Forest Community Special School we welcome appraisal from independent bodies and recognise the contributions that independent appraisers can make towards raising standards in quality assurance. The sorts of appraisal that can contribute towards quality assurance includes the relatively well known systems of statutory inspection via the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED), but can also include appraisals conducted by non-statutory bodies such as Investors in People; Arts Mark; Sports Mark. The school welcomes contact with voluntary organisations such as MENCAP; the National Autistic Society, SENSE. and empowers such organisations to conduct their own appraisals of our school's strengths in specific areas of disability and SEN that are of interest to these voluntary organisations. The continuing development of Heart of the Forest Community Special School is set out in the School's Long Term and Short Term School Development Plans and prospective parents are very welcome to borrow copies of these documents in order to learn more about how we are working towards our vision of excellence.