We are co-located with Rayner Stephens High School (formerly Astley Sports College), which is a 11-16 yrs 700 place mainstream Community High School. This has been a highly successful arrangement and both schools work very closely with each other to ensure that it remains so. Just because our pupils need specialist educational input does not mean that they should be separated from their mainstream peers geographically. A key part of our educational vision is to prepare pupils to maximise their opportunities in the wider world and our co-location is a huge advantage in this work.
We have inclusion opportunities, which include:
- social inclusion of our pupils into Rayner Stephens activities- for example our classes attending and participating in RS's sports day at Sport City stadium.
- social inclusion of RS pupils into Cromwell activities- for example RS pupils attending Cromwell's Industry Morning (where local businesses set up stands to explain their work).
- academic inclusion of our pupils into RS classes such as Life Skills classes, Food Technology and RS nurture group English lessons.
- RS pupils supporting Cromwell pupils to achieve more- for example RS peer mentors supporting Cromwell pupils to complete their 'Pupil Voice' questionnaires each year, RS's Sports Leaders supporting PE lessons and our Cromwell Sports Day.
In addition to these organised opportunities, the arrangements of our school promote inclusion more generally and subtly. There are no physical barriers within our buildings between the two schools and we even share a joint corridor where our classrooms are on one side and Rayner Stephen's classrooms are on the other so pupils meet on the corridor. We also share RS's canteen facilities and, after our pupils are served and seated, RS pupils start to use the canteen and mix freely (with constant Cromwell staff supervision) with Cromwell pupils. We also share lunchtime recreation spaces- again with constant Cromwell staff supervision. Many friendships between pupils from both schools can be continued at Tameside College as most of our pupils go on, post 16, to attend the specialist unit there called Aspirations.