Admissions

Broadly speaking our students’ profile will match the following criteria.

Our typical students:

1. Have social communication needs, whether they have a formal diagnosis or not. They may find the mainstream secondary environment causes high anxiety and is overwhelming.
2. Have experienced emotional barriers to school attendance.
3. Have experienced adverse childhood experiences that have impacted their mental health and well-being.

Laurus Grace is an Alternative Provision 11-16 free school offering specialist provision for students within a small, nurturing environment. We are following a mainstream model of providing students with a high-quality academic offer, where students will study for six GCSEs.

Alongside this, students follow a restorative curriculum and have an intervention offer which targets their social and personal development. We do not have any vocational or alternative offers.

All of our current students are in receipt of an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). As a result, the admission process is through the consultation process with local authority SEND teams.

We receive consultations for EHCP places in the same way as all schools and must determine whether we can meet the needs of the child, and whether our provision matches what is outlined in the EHCP. Some decisions will be linked to the profile of individual classes and whether spaces are available. We currently do not offer places for Year 7 students at transition from primary school.

When full, the school will be able to accommodate 80 students across 10 classes. We have recently moved into our purpose‑built school and are currently operating with a smaller number of classes. As we continue to grow in our new building, we will increase the number of places each year.

We are currently operating as longer-term placements for students with an EHCP, with the intention that they will complete their high school education with us before moving to their post-16 placement.

We are lucky to have such a highly skilled staff team who have shared values in supporting and educating our students.

Our staff is split broadly into three categories of teaching staff, pastoral staff and SEND staff, although they will work closely together. Each class will have a non-teaching Tutor who will be the key adult for students and will stay with their class in the same classroom.

Teachers will rotate to classes except where specialist equipment is needed. Our specialist roles include ‘Transition Mentor’, ‘School Counsellor and Wellbeing Lead’, and ‘Intervention and Inclusion Specialist’.

Specialist training has included:

• Unconditional Positive Regard and relational behaviour management
• The use of language and de-escalation approaches
• Solutions-focused training
• Comic strips and social stories
• Autism training by the Neurodevelopmental Team – Laurus Grace is proud to be part of the Greater Manchester Autism in Schools Project.