The Garden School

[EduCativ]

The Garden is an outstanding school in the London Borough of Hackney offering education for 4-16 year-olds with highly specialized provisions for learners with autism. We believe that every child should be recognized and respected as unique and special. We place each child’s individual needs and goals at the center of our work. It is this ethos that underpins our bespoke child-centered curriculum specially developed to create optimal opportunities to nurture communication, learning, and independence, in a safe and inclusive environment.
The Garden school is suitable for robust and mobile children and young people with a diagnosis of Autism who have severe learning difficulties. Admission to the school is through the statutory assessment process whereby The Garden school is named on a child’s education, health, and care (EHC) plan (previously Statement of Special Educational Needs).
The welfare of our students and staff is of paramount importance to us. We adhere to safer recruitment procedures, and all staff is given regular training in child protection safeguarding. We have a designated safeguarding children advisor and a deputy. We have good partnerships with parents and relevant outside agencies, including social care.
Our pupils develop skills to equip them for safer interactions in the wider world. At a basic level, this includes understanding the difference between private and public and building on this to develop safety in the community.
At The Garden, we have a large multi-disciplinary team with specialist skills and expertise who work in collaboration with class teams to support pupils’ development. These include speech and language therapists who support communication occupational therapists who support sensory processing and emotional regulation and educational psychologists, clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists from CAMHS who advise on learning and behavior.
Professional development and training of staff is a key component of the success of our school. Our teachers are all trained in specialist, evidence-based approaches to teaching children and young people with autism including TEACCH, SCERTS, PECS, and Intensive Interaction.
Each class team is led by a teacher with several dedicated support staff, many of whom are highly qualified and experienced in working with pupils with ASD.
At The Garden, we have developed a bespoke curriculum to meet the learning styles of pupils with autism. Students follow a topic-based curriculum, designed to develop the key skills of communication, independence, personal and social skills, emotional regulation, physical development, and life skills. Our framework places the child at the center and ensures that the curriculum’s content and learning experiences are tailored to meet individual needs.
Subject areas – known as ‘learning contexts’ – are based on the National Curriculum, and are carefully chosen to provide fun, motivating activities delivered through a multi-sensory teaching approach. The aim is not to fit our pupils into a national curriculum. It is to deliver aspects of the curriculum to meet their specific needs, whilst creating a wider curriculum that focuses on the development of key skills.
The Garden provides a stimulating program of visits and activities to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development. These activities enhance the curriculum, providing enriching experiences to aid our pupils’ personal development. Pupils take part in on-site activities such as gardening and attend visits to markets, art galleries, museums, and places of religious significance. Furthermore, through our strong relationships with cultural organizations, pupils are regularly visited by dance, drama, and opera groups.
The school uses a commercial software package Bsquared to track small steps of pupil progress in national curriculum subject areas and also a national data set CASPA which provides comparative data from similar schools that enables year-on-year benchmark of attainment and progress for individual pupils and groups within the school.
Regular progress meetings are held to review each child’s achievements. If a child is not making good progress extra support or different interventions are tried. The school holds multi-disciplinary meetings once a term which includes representatives from the wider professional team eg school doctor and nurse, Speech and Language Therapists, and Educational Psychologists. They can support the teachers in problem-solving to address any difficulties in learning or behavior or provide support for health needs.

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