At Lokrum Fields, we are passionate about enabling students to reach their full potential and achieve personal and academic success. We work hard to offer students an individualised education in a calm and supportive environment, ensuring their needs are met and helping them to recover from previous negative school experiences.
Lokrum Fields was inspected by Ofsted in its first year of operation, shortly after our first full-time students were enrolled. We were delighted that Ofsted recognised and commented on our: effective safeguarding practices; “individualised approach” to education and bespoke lesson planning; “strong focus on developing pupils’ self-esteem and self-confidence” and the provision of opportunities based on students’ interests and talents; “positive learning environment”; the positive behaviour of students and their attitudes towards equality and diversity; and the way staff act as “good role models”. We were also pleased that Ofsted endorsed our hybrid curriculum model for GCSEs, noting that any online learning is carefully monitored and supported by in-house staff.
Since the inspection by Ofsted, exam success in GCSEs has further demonstrated our commitment to providing students with the right level of academic challenge, to achieve ambitious outcomes.
Lokrum Fields benefits from a wealth of teaching experience, with a wide range of qualified subject specialist teachers and with several members of support staff also holding qualified teacher status. Our leadership team and Governing Body benefit from a wide range of experience and expertise, including previous school leadership experience.
The specific needs and presentation of our students affect all aspects of the way in which Wider Ambition settings are managed. For example, we take care to ensure that our attendance monitoring gives credit for the effort shown by students, including those who are able to attend full-time and those for whom travelling to Lokrum Fields and having a short conversation with a trusted adult also represents a significant achievement. We use carefully designed systems to identify and monitor trends in attendance, engagement with learning, academic progress and progress towards EHCP outcomes.
Ofsted noted that our proprietor, governors and leaders have an ambitious vision for the school. In order to fulfil this vision, we believe it is vital to have a culture of continuous review and to be willing to make changes where necessary. We are pleased that Ofsted endorsed the changes which our leadership team had introduced at the time of our last inspection, along with our plans for future developments, which have since been implemented successfully. Our leadership team retains a commitment to continuous improvement and an ethos of welcoming all feedback.
During our first year of operating, our Relationships curriculum focussed on providing structured opportunities to support the development of natural friendships and on helping students to understand the foundations of friendship. This was consistent with students’ needs and reflected the priorities articulated by parents. Once our first students had settled in, we implemented a formal RSHE consultation, which confirmed parental support for our RSHE curriculum. We remain committed to ensuring our RSHE provision reflects students’ needs, with appropriate regard to any gaps or delays our students may have in relation to friendship skills.
As Wider Ambition continues to establish new settings in Worcestershire and Warwickshire, we are continuing to recruit additional staff, many of whom work cross-site. Our approach to cross-site working enables our students to benefit from greater breadth in our teaching and therapy teams than would otherwise be sustainable, as well as providing beneficial consistency for students who transition from Lokrum Fields to our post-16 setting. We operate a robust recruitment process, looking not only for expertise in the relevant specialism but also, crucially, for evidence of ability to meet our students’ needs. The care we take with recruitment sometimes means we have vacancies for longer than we would like. However, the extensive breadth of expertise and qualifications within our staffing team, and our willingness to commission external support where appropriate, minimises any impact on students.
We are committed to high levels of staff wellbeing, and we are pleased that Ofsted noted that “staff feel part of a cohesive team”. We are proud to have such a highly qualified and experienced team at Lokrum Fields and we recognise that their passion for delivering our ethos is crucial to students’ ongoing success. We are very grateful to staff for their commitment to student wellbeing, their expertise and their support. Wider Ambition’s parent company enjoys excellent staff retention, with more than 85% of staff having over 10 years’ continuous service, and staffing at Wider Ambition is on track to demonstrate similar stability.
It has always been a priority at Lokrum Fields for staff to work closely with parents and to recognise parents as experts. Many of our staff have personal experience of the challenges involved in finding the right educational provision for children with complex needs, including understanding the related strain on family life and finances. We also appreciate that students will experience ongoing challenges and emerging needs throughout their placements and that open communications, joint planning and shared expectations are key. We actively seek and always welcome information from parents about the needs, thoughts, wishes and feelings of our students. We seek parents’ opinions, recognising their expertise and unique knowledge of their child, when planning provision for their children. We recognise that our students will often need to communicate with us via a parent and that this is empowering for our students, whose social camouflaging has often impeded their ability to communicate important information in the past.
We support families during the admissions process by seeking their views first, being transparent about any communications with Local Authorities, signposting to additional sources of advice, attending SEND Tribunals and keeping in touch throughout the process. At the start of a student’s transition, we work closely with parents to understand the finer details of the student’s needs and preferences and to develop individualised plans. Parents are invited to remain on site, in a comfortable waiting area, whenever students need them to be present. On an ongoing basis, we communicate with parents at school pick-up or drop-off, as well as through regular individual emails and phone calls in relation to any changes, feedback or arising needs. Where students experience an additional difficulty or need further support, we arrange meetings with parents, therapists and key staff to agree plans in genuine co-production. Meeting notes are routinely made available to parents. In common with all aspects of how we work at Lokrum Fields, we are continuing to review how we work with parents, and we always warmly invite constructive suggestions.
Since our Ofsted inspection, Lokrum Fields has changed from having a small number of new students on roll to having an established cohort across our yeargroups. We have been delighted with the exam successes achieved by our Key Stage 4 students and with their successful onward progression to Chestnut Place and other destinations.
We are very happy to discuss the Ofsted report and our ongoing plans with parents of current or prospective students individually – please do ask if you would like an individual phone call or meeting.
You can access our latest inspection report here.
You can access the report from our pre-registration inspection here.