As a school we want to play our part in highlighting the importance of authentically inclusive workplaces where those with additional needs can be fully integrated into competitive employment, wherever their field of passion and expertise might lie.

Nationally only 5.6% of people with an EHCP are in paid employment age 25 and over. It is our mission, through our education and pastoral provision, to equip pupils with the skills, self-belief, and ambition to be able to success in their adult lives and transition into full time paid employment.

We provide an education for those who might not thrive in a mainstream setting but who equally would not be suited to attending a specialist SEN school. We provide pupils with an enhanced secondary education in the knowledge that we can meet individual needs and provide the right environment and opportunities. We also support students who may not have transitioned successfully into a mainstream secondary school, or where the placement might have failed.

Dovetailing a range of therapeutic and SEN support approaches with personalised, student-led learning opportunities, we promote independence, agency, curiosity and self-awareness. Our purpose is to engender a love of learning bespoke to everyone through a lived day to day educational experience. Through immersion in a supportive, healthy, exciting, and aspirational time at a school which has their futures in sight from the outset, not only will the children’s school days be enriched and fulfilling, so too will their lives and futures, far beyond the school gates.

Our team at Undershaw firmly believes that additional needs should hinder neither aspiration nor independence and that learners should be empowered to fulfil their personal potential in adulthood. Our inspirational teachers are actively embedding routes from the start of every child’s time with us, not only into higher and further education but also to employability, so our young people are equipped throughout to take up their place in the wider world with confidence.