Victoria Fox, Autism Lead at St John’s School, shares her experience of the accreditation process, including her insights on what has been of most benefit throughout the accreditation process.

St John’s School is a residential and day school, catering for students aged three to 19. Formerly a school specialising in teaching deaf pupils, St John’s has recently extended to support all children who have found the mainstream education model difficult to access. A few years ago, we noticed that though children referred to us were deaf or hearing-impaired, many of them were autistic and/or had social, emotional and mental health needs. Local authorities recognised that our setup for deaf children – small class sizes, acoustically-treated classrooms, different educational pathways, on site audiology and speech and language therapists was also suitable for pupils with a wide range of learning differences.

As a school, we want to meet the needs of all our students. We embarked on training, starting with management and appointed an autism lead. A small support team was formed to ensure the process of assessing prospective students ran as smoothly as possible, liaising with parents and the local authority, leading to inviting the students in for a few days. Training featured regular updates to all staff, in our belief that everyone in our school should have an understanding of the neurodivergent world. 

We knew we were evolving as a school, and wanted to ensure we were providing the best experience for all our students. We decided to apply for accreditation through the National Autistic Society to help us identify areas for improvement and seek advice on how to develop further. We appreciated that having the prestigious kitemark would be reassuring for families looking at us as a prospective school.

A focus group started the process of completing the preliminary audits. Initially, these were daunting. How did we complete all the sections? Were we covering everything? What if we missed something? Support from the National Autistic Society ensured we were guided through this step, providing us with invaluable knowledge and advice.

It also helped us identify areas that we needed to develop further, as well as areas we needed to know more about. For even in our own school, did we have in-depth knowledge of what was happening in our multi-sensory impairment classes. What about our residential setting? Thankfully, our observations, with a focus on the accreditation, were more illuminating than alarming as we began to appreciate the expertise of our staff.

The motto of our school is, ‘Where every voice is seen and heard’. This underpins our ethos as a school, and pupil voice is prevalent in this. As part of the accreditation process we wanted to identify how the views of all our students are taken into account. For example, do we have strategies for non-verbal children to make choices? As a school, we place great emphasis on promoting all kinds of communication, enabling young people to express their needs and preferences. Pupils requiring signing systems have access to Makaton, Sign Supported English and British Sign Language, as well as electronic communication aids.

During the accreditation process, we also:

• created more break out and calm spaces, asking the pupils what they wanted in these spaces, not just assuming we knew what would work best. We worked with our Speech and Language Therapists to improve pupil passports to include pupil voice, consulting parents and support staff for their views. 
• improved the way in which we used the Autism Education Trust (AET) progression framework, setting clear ‘smart’ targets in consultation with pupils, parents and support staff. 
• introduced the Thrive approach to support pupils and regulate their behaviours and associated anxieties. The new approach was more nurturing, problem solving and beneficial to students; we have seen a marked improvement in overall wellbeing. 

As a result, we found this process to be cathartic since we realised that so much was evolving in the school and residential setting; that each new student motivated staff into thinking how they could make their educational experience better. The most positive outcome of undergoing accreditation is that we have begun to celebrate our achievements more, and work better as a team.

Though we have not completed our accreditation process yet - we do not know what the outcome will be - the process has already been beneficial to us. We would fully recommend it. We have been able to measure just how far we have come in hosting our autistic students and the autistic adults who work here.