Special needs school is helping children back into education

A SPECIAL educational needs school has opened on the site of a former care home.

Aurora Rowan School officially opened its doors in Dysons Wood, Kidmore End, with the opening carried out by the Aurora Group in November.

The group, which is in its seventh year, runs more than 20 schools across the country which specialise in special needs education.

The Rowan School is a weekday residential and day school which specialises in providing care and education to children with autism spectrum conditions and moderate to severe learning disabilities.

It currently delivers education to 10 students between age five and 16 and has 15 other spaces that it expects to fill over the next two-and-a-half years.

There are 20 staff members employed at the school, including three teachers, eight teaching assistants, four senior management and four support services staff. It also has an on-site speech and occupational therapists.

Headteacher Lesley Walkden, who invited the Henley Standard to visit the school on Monday, said the Aurora Group was approached by education authorities locally to fill a gap in the availability of spaces for children with special educational needs. She said that many of the children referred to the school had been out of formal education for as long as two years due to lack of appropriate spaces in the area.

Ms Walkden said: “Oxfordshire County Council and Reading Borough Council wanted us to open because they have run out of spaces in their catchment areas.

“The number of children who have been identified with moderate to severe learning disabilities has increased significantly over the past 25 years and local authorities are struggling to keep up.

“We get approached by local authorities who say, ‘we really need some more spaces in our local area’ and we look to build or open a school in that area, as Aurora did.”

Ms Walkden, who has almost 20 years of experience delivering education to children with severe learning difficulties, said that students at the school receive one-on-one support.

Some stay at the residential centre from Monday to Thursday, which is offered as respite support and weekly boarding. She said: “We have lots of sensory areas to help our children regulate because there are children who have challenges in regulating their sensory system, whether that’s their hearing or the feedback they get from their touch, their proprioceptive system, which tells you where you are in space and helps manage the impact of gravity.

“The world impacts our children hugely and what our job is, is to get them to be impactful in the world and to understand that they have a voice and that their actions are important.

“The first word we teach here is ‘no’ because that empowers you, like, ‘I don’t want to go in that direction’ or ‘I don’t want to wear those clothes’.

“We focus on a lot of play-based learning because you learn so much through play and it gives you the freedom to make mistakes. It teaches us how to manage when things don’t go right.”

The site used to be home to The Maple home for adults with autism, which was opened in 2013 and run by the Disabilities Trust.

But in 2021 the home was rated “inadequate” by the Care Quality Commission and put into special measures.

Inspectors said the home was unsafe, ineffective, not well-led and not responsive. The Aurora Group took over the site and initially applied to South Oxfordshire District Council for permission to expand the capacity to 50 students but this was rejected and so it revised its pupil numbers.

Ms Walkden added that the school is slowly accepting referrals based on suitability to the school’s offering and capacity.

A spokesman for the county council said: “We are delivering a programme of new and expanded special schools, aimed at providing additional SEND capacity closer to where pupils live.

“Bloxham Grove Academy opened in the north of the county in early 2024, another new school is awaiting planning permission to be built in Faringdon, due to open 2026/27, and the council is working with local education providers and housing developers to open two new special schools in Didcot by 2028.

“These four new schools, along with a programme of expansions planned at existing schools, will add more than 600 special school places between 2023 and 2028.

“We are also working to increase specialist provision within mainstream schools and promote fully inclusive education.”