Paddock Primary School helping children reach their potential (From Surrey Comet)

Paddock Primary School helping children reach their potential

6:11pm Thursday 20th November 2008

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Every child can reach their full potential with the right guidance. This is the key thinking at Paddock primary school in Battersea, which specialises in students with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD).

Through working with every student teachers aim to unlock their talents and prepare them for fulfilling adult lives.

Headteacher Peggy Walpole says: “We are working towards being a centre for excellence.

"Our ethos is continual learning, and our students teach us. We centre around the child.

“We work with their strengths. Autistic children love to work. To them, work is play and play is work. They’re driven to work.”

The school, in Forthbridge Road, is developing its focus on ASD, with a wide range of facilities and specialists available to its 57 pupils.

The condition is currently incurable, and affectS children’s social interaction and language skills, with some not able to speak at all.

Pupils may also have problems with imagination, for example, predicting the future and preparing for it.

Other characteristics include a love of routines, focus on special interests and in some cases a particular physical sensitivity.

Children with ASD are different, so those affected severely often cannot cope in mainstream schools.

The anxiety brought on by their problems causes nervous behaviour, but this can be reduced by allowing the child to work the way they feel comfortable with.

Mrs Walpole explains: “If you give them the right systems, it reduces the anxiety levels.

If you are anxious then you can’t work.” Teachers at Paddock work with speech and occupational therapists to improve students’ language and life skills.

Through specially-designed games, they learn how to ask for different types of food by holding up cards or saying words.

Staff have also adopted the TEACCH system in classrooms, which works in conjunction with the pupils needs, involving, for example, a series of routines, structures and independent work.

For a special treat, students have lessons in the sensory room, where they learn about cause and effect by pressing buttons to activate coloured lights, a vibrating chair or a wind machine.

“Our philosophy is one of openness to the children and the staff and the parents of what we are doing,” says Mrs Walpole.

“We develop everybody. Each child is different and needs a personalised curriculum.”

The school also takes students with complex needs (or severe learning difficulties), who take lessons in a separate stream but join the others for play times.

In 18 months the school is due to move to a newly refurbished campus at St Margaret’s Crescent in Putney, which it will share with Greenmead School.

The new facilities will include outdoor classrooms and possibly a hydrotherapy pool, and the new location will bring them closer to Paddock senior school in Priory Lane, where many will graduate to.

Here, they learn about adult life alongside the national curriculum and many go on work placements in shops, restaurants and garden centres, which may help them find employment.

Mrs Walpole says: “We want young people who take on life to the best of their abilities. Our staff work towards giving them that independence. At the end of the day, we want them to be happy.”

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