INTERVIEW WITH GIANNA COLIZZA

 

What is your role within the school?

I am the leader of the Woodlands (at Netley Primary School ASD Unit), so I run the day-to-day running of the centre.

 

Were you involved with creating the brief for the school and having everything you need within the Woodlands?

No, I was not involved

 

Were any of the other staff involved?

We have had a change of staff, so the previous head of the school was the one got the centre up and running, but she has now left, and I have taken over that role, and I am a classroom teacher as well. But I was not involved with the design of the Woodlands.

 

How does the architecture of the school meet the needs of the pupils?

We have three classrooms within the centre for each age bracket. Early years classroom is larger, and there are as many tables as it is based around free play and one large table for group activities. The next classroom is stage one where you will see a mixture of the two classrooms. There is still the large area for messy play where the children can work on skills like sharing and those sort of things. More class tables where they start to do individual work. The key-stage two room is more similar to a normal classroom.  Each child has their own personal desk, and within that desk, it is personalised with their schedules and to how they like it, visuals words and those sorts of things. 

 

We also have our large sensory room for our children where they can have sensory breaks when they need to as well which I think is very important and separated us from the main school. So we have opportunities in the morning to used it to wake themselves up, ready for learning, and in the afternoon we also use it as a way to relax and calm down at the end of the day

 

Are there a lot of schools within London that are accessible?

No, for schools like this, students have to have a statement or an EHCT zone, and the parents do not get to choose what school they go to, it goes through the paddle of their area, and they choose what best fits their child. Parents have a say in which school they prefer and which best fits their child. So a different school may be very sensory needs based, and that is where they may recommend their child to go, and they would be placed into that. We work with moderate to high children with autism, so we are connected to the Netley Primary school care test, and hopefully, some of our children will be able to integrate back into the mainstream school. It does depend, but hey do have to have a statement to fit every child's needs best

 

Difficulties they face because they can't get into each school?

Every child has statement which says the needs of every child but we still can't  take every child. As there are not enough schools within London to cater for all of the kids, they are put into mainstream schools, within a setting that that does not suit them or even with people who do not understand them enough and their learning difficulties. But because there are no schools, that’s there they have to go. So they try and best fit the kid into the available spaces. Because they’re autistic, there’s a high ratio of adults to children. So most classrooms will have eight children in them in most schools that you go to, so it's not as if you have a class of thirty. So at Netley, we only have space for twenty-four students, that starts from nursery up to year six.

 

How are the different classrooms designed to cater for the needs of the different children?

The children are working at a lower age than what they actually are, within each of the classrooms you can see the different materials used and the sizes of everything. For the younger ones, the toilets are based within the classroom because they are non-verbal children, so they are easily accessible. For the older ones, they have to ask to leave the classrooms.

 

What types of spaces to the children enjoy being in?

Depends on the individual child, each child is very different. We have set up our school to be a very safe environment. We have a playground that is just for them, that has equipment in there that they enjoy. But some like to go out into the larger area where they can just run, and there is not much happening. There is a water play area when you go outside that some kids prefer to use. They all love the sensory room because they get something out of that as well. Within each classroom, there are areas that are safe. Some will go to a book corner and read. Some will go to a quiet room where they can just sit down and do nothing if they wanted to. Every classroom sets up a safe space, and every child may use different spaces within the same day. They may go into the soft play, to begin with, and then prefer a different area later. It's just making sure that every classroom is set up with a space that the child does enjoy and an alternative area for them to go to