The Schools
School Diaries creates specialised school planners tailored to the requirements of special-needs schools. Recently, this saw our team design, print and deliver brand new diaries for two UK special-needs schools, the Northern Counties School of Newcastle upon Tyne and RNIB Three Spires Academy of Coventry.
Northern Counties School
Part of the education services within the Percy Hedley Foundation, the Northern Counties school specialises in providing education to children with hearing and visual impairments, profound learning disabilities and autistic spectrum disorder (ASD).
With the philosophy that all children and young people have the right to an education appropriately directed and managed to allow the fullest development of their personal, intellectual, physical, social and emotional skills, the Northern Counties School integrates high levels of direct therapy and education to optimise individual potential and progress.
RNIB Three Spires Academy
RNIB Three Spires Academy is a special school (SEN) in Coventry for pupils aged 4-11 with significant learning disabilities. Over half of its children have autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and others have additional needs, including sensory impairment and communication difficulties. Their vision is to provide exceptional education and developmental outcomes that appropriately meet each individual student’s needs.
The School Planner
With the needs and wellbeing of the pupil’s at the very heart of everything they do, these two schools wanted to create a planner that was specifically tailored to the children and their precise requirements.
For the Northern Counties School, School Diaries helped to develop a home-school communication book that included sign language visuals to help the hearing-impaired students. Home-school communication is particularly important to Northern Counties School as it allows constant and monitored interaction between teachers, therapists, students and parents to ensure a fully-integrated approach to the child’s care and wellbeing. The diary features space for notes from both school and home each day, a plastic pocket to transport important documents and ‘wow moments’ that enable the children to remember the things they have done particularly well throughout the school year.
Working with the RNIB Three Spires Academy, School Diaries created a home-school diary in a larger format than a typical planner, at A4 size. This enabled the use of large typefaces and bright colours to help the students with visual impairments to see and engage with their school planner better. The planner has full sized pages to note down homework each week, along with space for small messages from home and school everyday. It also features a large letter section for the school to be able to provide a comprehensive understanding of the child’s weekly progress to parents and a feature for the children to mark down how they felt during the morning and afternoon of each day.
The Impact
“As a SEN School it is imperative to have excellent communication links with all of our parents and carers. Due to the nature of the children's needs, they may not be able to share what activities they have completed at school and generally how their day has been. The school planners act as "a voice" and supports necessary home/school communications.”
Tanya Power - Three Spires Academy
At School Diaries, we provide high-quality, transparently-priced products and services to our customers. We see pupils and teachers as the unique thinkers and learners that they are and provide fully customised planner solutions catering to the individual, not the masses. To browse our product range, visit: https://www.school-diaries.co.uk/collections/all-products
