About Us
Welcome to our school!
Pupils attending Elms School have an Education and Health Care Plan, reflecting their complex needs. Their main identified need type is either SEMH, many with ASD.
Pupils join at various times in their school career from Y1 – Y11 and have often been out of education for some time.
Elms School educates some of the most challenging pupils in the area, including some who have not been successful in independent provisions. This presents its own set of challenges, but we have a good record of helping pupils modify their behaviour so that they can be successful. Many pupils display symptoms of conditions without a formal diagnosis.
The school serves a wide catchment area; children come from Dover, Deal, Folkestone, Ashford, Thanet, Canterbury, Romney Marsh and neighbouring villages.
Elms School is part of the KsENT Co-Operative Trust, which includes all Kent Special Schools. Elms is a full member of the Trust, which aims to work collaboratively across Kent to provide a world-class education for our pupils and to offer school to school support to each other and to mainstream schools in Kent.
Elms is one of five SEMH with Learning Difficulties Schools in Kent. There are two SEMH Secondary schools, which cater for pupils who have the potential to achieve a Grade C/4 or above in Maths and English at GCSE. The SEMH with Learning Difficulties schools cater for pupils who have learning difficulties along with SEMH difficulties and those pupils routinely take exams in Maths and English to Entry Level. Some of our more able pupils take Maths and English Functional Skills at Level 1 and, in some instances, Level 2 or GCSE.
Vision
Elms School is a nurturing place of learning that has high expectations for all.
Our therapeutic approaches nurture students so they form relationships and to learn to;
- self-regulate
- demonstrate respect
- take responsibility
- understand their and others’ emotions
Our curriculum enriches the experiences of our students, develops independence and promotes collaboration.
Values
Respect
Kindness
Safety
They also take exams in Science and Computer Science. Pupils take GCSE courses in Art, 3D Design and Graphic Arts and BTec in Catering. They have opportunities to achieve bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award in KS4.
A few Primary pupils with SEMH transfer to a SEMH Secondary School at the end of Key Stage 2 and those with Learning Difficulties remain at Elms.
Staff from Elms School deliver training to other Kent schools in Team Teach and Restorative approaches. As a school, we follow the Thrive approach and we were one of the first schools in Kent to embrace the approach. We also implement Trauma Informed approaches.
Elms is a Restorative School, with all staff trained in Restorative Approaches and this underpins our approaches to Behaviour Management. We are also an attachment aware school, with all staff trained to use the Thrive Approach and qualified Thrive practitioners as part of the therapeutic team. We also have trained Trauma Informed Practitioners and a Speech & Language HLTA.
We manage our own transport for pupils. This enables us to train our own staff to manage the behaviours of our pupils and to group pupils appropriately on our vehicles. Pupils therefore have a settled start to the day. They are also offered breakfast on arrival.
A Welfare Officer eases and supports transition from school to college to reduce NEETS and we have a high success rate in terms of pupils taking up college courses. We are developing our careers programme led by our Assistant Headteacher.
We have an open door policy and parents and carers value the support we offer both them and their children. We have increased the number of opportunities for parents to attend functions at school, both formally for parent-teacher consultations and informally.
We have an impressive building and specialist rooms and resources, which include a Sports Hall, ICT Suite and Specialist rooms for Design & Technology, Science, Art, Music and Food Technology. We have an outside learning area and we are developing Forest Schools.
We use Parentmail - this is a home-school communication system which uses both e-mail and text messages to keep us in touch with you. Please click here to visit their website. If you require paper copies, please email your request to office@elms.kent.sch.uk with “paper copies” as the subject. Alternatively please call 01304 201964 to make your request
