Sunnydown School A GSG School
- Sunnydown School
Portley House
152 Whyteleafe Road
Caterham
Surrey
CR3 5ED - Head: Mr Paul Jensen
- T 01883 342281
- F 01883 341342
- E office@sunnydown.surrey.sch.uk
- W www.sunnydown.surrey.sch.uk/
- A special state school for boys aged from 11 to 16 with communication and interaction difficulties, including autism.
- Boarding: No
- Local authority: Surrey
- Pupils: 81
- Religion: Non-denominational
- Fees: State financed
- Open days: Wednesday 18th January 2023 9.30am - 11.00am
- Review: View The Good Schools Guide Review
-
Ofsted:
- Latest Overall effectiveness Outstanding 1
- Outcomes for children and learners Outstanding 1
- Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Outstanding 1
- Personal development, behaviour and welfare Outstanding 1
- Effectiveness of leadership and management Outstanding 1
- 1 Full inspection 23rd May 2023
- Previous Ofsted grade: Good on 12th July 2016
- Ofsted report: View the Ofsted report
What The Good Schools Guide says..
We were pleased to find here the head telling us that reducing anxieties was central to the school’s ethos, and parents reporting on how effectively this is done. He brings some of the Aussie outback to the school too (grew up in a community with fewer people than this school, he says). He takes the boys fishing, they ‘catch their own trout and kill it with a priest,’ he told us. You might be picturing, as we did, a dog-collared chap administering the last rites, however, we learned that a priest in angler lingo is a ceramic instrument...
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What The Good Schools Guide says
Head teacher
Since 2014, Paul Jensen. He’s dapper, in a blue suit, patterned socks, shoes with contrasting laces - a Paul Smith/Ted Baker sartorial style which doesn’t often grace a head’s office. But parents, boys, and Ofsted alike all appreciate his modern approach. The previous incumbent was head for 33 years, and Ofsted has heralded the team under Jensen’s leadership with successfully turning around a decline in standards which had been ‘masked by a lack of transparency’. It’s an approach defined by a whirligig of acronyms – he rattles out RICE and REST and SMSC, of which more later.
He was previously deputy head at Clarendon, a school for learning difficulties, and at Melrose (for social, emotional and mental health difficulties). But he began his career in mainstream, teaching science and maths...
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Overall school performance (for comparison or review only)
Results by exam and subject
Subject results
Entry/Exit
Special Education Needs
Sunnydown School is a community special school; all pupils have statements of special educational needs that identify specific learning difficulties and/or difficulties on the autistic spectrum. Pupils are taught in groups of 10 or less and follow the National Curriculum in a modified manner, to make it more accessible to the pupils. The school has an ethos of good relationships between pupils, staff and parents which Ofsted regard as outstanding.
| Condition | Provision for in school |
|---|---|
| ASD - Autistic Spectrum Disorder | Y |
| Aspergers | Y |
| Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders | Y |
| 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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