Colnbrook School A GSG School
- Colnbrook School
Hayling Road
Watford
Hertfordshire
WD19 7UY - Head: Caroline Aplin
- T 020 8428 1281
- F 020 8421 5359
- E admin@colnbrook.herts.sch.uk
- W www.colnbrook.herts.sch.uk/
- A special state school for pupils aged from 4 to 11 with autism, learning difficulties and speech and language difficulties.
- Read about the best schools in East Hertfordshire and West Hertfordshire
- Boarding: No
- Local authority: Hertfordshire
- Pupils: 111: 30 girls, 81 boys
- Religion: Non-denominational
- Review: View The Good Schools Guide Review
-
Ofsted:
- Latest Overall effectiveness Outstanding 1
- Effectiveness of leadership and management Outstanding 2
- 1 Short inspection 20th April 2023
- 2 Full inspection 23rd October 2013
Short inspection reports only give an overall grade; you have to read the report itself to gauge whether the detailed grading from the earlier full inspection still stands.
- Previous Ofsted grade: Outstanding on 3rd December 2008
- Ofsted report: View the Ofsted report
What The Good Schools Guide says..
Aplin has a keen interest in creativity and an impressive contact book so she has brought in professional artists such as No Added Sugar from Swindon, organised an art gallery for the first parents' evening where all the pictures were framed and were up for sale to boost school funds and has taken children to the Schools' County Dance. Festival at the Alban Arena. Her view is: 'Our pupils need to have all the opportunities that children would enjoy in mainstream and a chance to ...
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What The Good Schools Guide says
Headteacher
Since September 2018, Caroline Aplin. She worked in mainstream primary and early years where she gained experience with special needs before working in a school for children with severe learning difficulties in Hillingdon. She has 10 years' experience in SEN and a MA in SEN. This is her first headship.
Aplin is impressively organised and staff, pupils and parents seem to respond well to her direct approach. 'Ready', 'kind' and 'safe' are the watchwords for the school, chosen, after discussion, by the children. They now have a new school song called The Colnbrook Way celebrating these values, and they were the catalyst for a new piece of art outside the main entrance which consists of three trees made up of a number of discs, each designed and made by a...
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Overall school performance (for comparison or review only)
Entry/Exit
Special Education Needs
Colnbrook is a Primary School for children with moderate learning difficulties. At present, the school can cater for up to 80 children between the ages of 4 and 11 years with an additional 10 places in the Autism Base. At Colnbrook we aim to provide a stimulating, happy, secure educational environment for our children in order to encourage them to develop social and academic skills in accordance with each individual's ability. We aim to help our children make the most of their capabilities. We believe that children learn best when they are happy and satisfied and we make every effort to ensure that they find their work both interesting and rewarding. We believe that the children learn best when they have a positive self-image and this is only achieved through a child having successful learning experiences. Colnbrook is the first Special School in Hertfordshire to have been awarded the Basic Skills Agency's Quality Mark for its teaching of Literacy and Numeracy. It has recently become the first Special School in Hertfordshire to reach the standard for the School Self Evaluation Award. Colnbrook was judged to be an “outstanding school” by Ofsted in their report dated October 2005 Nov 09.
| Condition | Provision for in school |
|---|---|
| ASD - Autistic Spectrum Disorder | Y |
| Aspergers | |
| Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders | |
| CReSTeD registered for Dyslexia | |
| Dyscalculia | |
| Dysgraphia | |
| Dyslexia | |
| Dyspraxia | |
| English as an additional language (EAL) | |
| Genetic | |
| Has an entry in the Autism Services Directory | Y |
| Has SEN unit or class | |
| HI - Hearing Impairment | |
| Hospital School | |
| Mental health | |
| MLD - Moderate Learning Difficulty | |
| MSI - Multi-Sensory Impairment | |
| Natspec Specialist Colleges | |
| OTH - Other Difficulty/Disability | |
| Other SpLD - Specific Learning Difficulty | |
| PD - Physical Disability | |
| PMLD - Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulty | |
| SEMH - Social, Emotional and Mental Health | |
| SLCN - Speech, Language and Communication | |
| SLD - Severe Learning Difficulty | |
| Special facilities for Visually Impaired | |
| SpLD - Specific Learning Difficulty | |
| VI - Visual Impairment |
Interpreting catchment maps
The maps show in colour where the pupils at a school came from*. Red = most pupils to Blue = fewest.
Where the map is not coloured we have no record in the previous three years of any pupils being admitted from that location based on the options chosen.
For help and explanation of our catchment maps see: Catchment maps explained
Further reading
If there are more applicants to a school than it has places for, who gets in is determined by which applicants best fulfil the admissions criteria.
Admissions criteria are often complicated, and may change from year to year. The best source of information is usually the relevant local authority website, but once you have set your sights on a school it is a good idea to ask them how they see things panning out for the year that you are interested in.
Many schools admit children based on distance from the school or a fixed catchment area. For such schools, the cut-off distance will vary from year to year, especially if the school give priority to siblings, and the pattern will be of a central core with outliers (who will mostly be siblings). Schools that admit on the basis of academic or religious selection will have a much more scattered pattern.
*The coloured areas outlined in black are Census Output Areas. These are made up of a group of neighbouring postcodes, which accounts for their odd shapes. These provide an indication, but not a precise map, of the school’s catchment: always refer to local authority and school websites for precise information.
The 'hotter' the colour the more children have been admitted.
Children get into the school from here:
regularly
most years
quite often
infrequently
sometimes, but not in this year
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