Windlesham House School

At Windlesham House, we cater for a broad range of abilities including the very talented and academically able children and those who may need learning support. We do have a number of children with special needs and aim to provide them with appropriate help, but these children must be of average ability or they are likely to find the broad curriculum too demanding and not appropriate to their needs.

We assess the children briefly before they join the school (normally when they have an overnight stay) and we hope that any existing special needs will have been discussed with us by the child's parents. Once we have had access to any existing reports (e.g. from previous schools or from educational psychologists) we can arrange a programme to suit their needs. We have a team of specialist teachers, under the head of learning support, who give a mixture of individual or small group lessons to the children. The number of lessons will vary according to need and to our resources. We offer support with reading, spelling, written language skills, handwriting, word-processing, touch-typing, maths, visual perceptual training, speech and language and occupational therapy and counselling. We make a charge for these lessons, and details are available on request.

Other children, after an initial settling in period, may be identified by subject teachers as having some areas of difficulty and this leads to discussion with the learning support department. In October, we give all children NFER verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests, maths, reading and spelling tests and these will help identify any areas of concern. After observation and discussion with the child's teachers we may give a child diagnostic tests to ascertain where the problem lies. We will inform parents at this stage and discuss the support that may be needed. It is possible to arrange a full, in-depth assessment by a visiting educational psychologist who will make recommendations for the child's educational programme and we do have the services of a speech and language therapist and occupational therapist when required.

All children have a right to a broad and balanced education and we aim to provide the necessary support for each child. This is in line with the government's code of practice for the teaching of children with special needs, which emphasises that the needs of the children are paramount. In order to do so, many of the children requiring learning support do not study Latin, as this is an optional subject at Common Entrance. We use this time for support lessons. Learning support lessons can also take place in the lunch hour, outside lesson time and, in a few cases, during other lessons in non-examined subjects.

09-09