Barley Lane School on a page.

The people things

If you are finding out about us it is likely your child or a child you know or work with is clearly bright and capable but not thriving in their mainstream primary or secondary school and this for a whole range of reasons. You can see they need help and support with their emotions, behaviour and learning and you are now beginning to explore possible alternatives…

Please be reassured we know your child is talented, unique and complex. 

We work hard with parents and carers and professionals to understand and support each youngster individually.

There are common experiences and themes in both the challenges the children face and how we support them, for example, building good relationships with other pupils and teachers, autism, attention deficit, difficulties with reading and writing are all familiar to us.

Therefore, creative teaching, embedded routines and strong and caring relationships are at the heart of our work.

If you are looking for a school where there is a broad curriculum both academic and vocational with a range of GCSEs and vocational qualifications where students can also have a variety of enriching experiences from abseiling (we offer the DoE award too) to construction and barbering then please come and visit us and we can explore together how we can help.

The technical things

• The school is designated SEMH and works with and for diverse children across key stages 2, 3 and 4.
• The school is a day school with up to 80 places.
• ACE ADHD, ASD, PDA, ODD SPLD and access to SALT these are common themes of need but equally many of our young people simply need the emotional security of a smaller and more child-centred school and stable relationships with skilled, caring and consistent adults.
• We work hard to offer practical and emotional support to our equally diverse families.
• The school’s prevailing culture is rooted in building positive and compassionate relationships and recognising the children’s innate worth and celebrating their successes but also the challenges they overcome and it seeks to promote and embed the children’s happiness and wellbeing but there is also more targeted support and a school counsellor, staff trained in ELSA and access to mentoring.
• The curriculum is increasingly bespoke and personalized and also necessarily broad to accommodate a diverse and able student body: it is both academic with GCSEs in core subjects and a range of accredited vocational courses at college are offered from year 9.
• The curriculum is also enriched with activities of all kinds from DoE to drumming, mountain biking to construction and barbering and this contributes to the young people’s happiness and wellbeing; they have fun 🙂
• Classes are small and nurturing and whilst we have specialist teachers most of our young people stay within a primary model and often with the same teacher over time as this stability undoubtedly promotes their wellbeing and so enables them to learn.
• Where children are particularly complex and sometimes vulnerable there is limited access to very small and highly supported groups with a wholly bespoke and flexible curriculum
• Some of our children return to mainstream school and almost all successfully transition to college