Wetheringsett Manor School

Additional Information

Wetheringsett Manor School is a co-educational day school for up to 100 pupils (100 pupils currently on role), aged 7 to 18. The pupils have a diverse range of needs with SEMH and ASD as the primary diagnoses. The school serves 4 local authorities (Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Hertfordshire) and pupils have varying socio-economic backgrounds.

The site is a converted Manor house set in 17.5 acres of grounds in the small Suffolk village of Wetheringsett. All pupils have an Education and Health Care Plan.

The school has a high staff: pupil ratio with most classes having at least a working ratio of 1:3 this is a reflection on the level of supervision that our pupils require and academic support they need to engage them with learning.

We have an integrated therapeutic curriculum that runs alongside our academic framework. This is comprised of occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and psychotherapy. Our SENCO works alongside these therapists to help deliver academic interventions designed to aid accelerated progress and “gap fill” prior deficits in learning.

There is a large proportion of pupils in care (14 out of 100) that attend the school, over 14 times the national average (1 in 100) in terms of population for maintained schools. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-looked-after-children All funding authority virtual schools hold the school in high regard and seek placements as a primary choice.

We have recently opened our new Key Stage 2 provision which has its own staff team and is in a stand-alone area of the school grounds. This will allow us to provide education for an additional 16 pupils between the ages of 9 – 11.

Pupils who attend our school have been out of educational placement for an average of over 3.2 years, Prior placements show significantly lower attendance for pupils than when they start placement here.

The continued variance in needs of pupils include: a pupil who uses a feeding tube for meals, another with Schmid–Fraccaro syndrome, 2 pupils with chronic fatigue syndrome and 6 pupils with FASD. We have also noticed an increasing number of pupils with PTSD and PDA/ODD although this is not recognised by all funding authorities.