Admissions

1, Talk to your local authority's Special Educational Needs (SEN) team. They will assess your child and provide you with an Educational Health Care Plan (ECHP); these have replaced 'Statements'. The contact details for the SEN team will be on the education section of the council's website.

2, Contact the school to arrange an informal visit; you do not have to bring your child at this point. We will be happy to answer your questions as we show you around.

3, If you like what you see, you can let your local authority know that you have been to look around and would like your child to be referred to Pioneer School. You will however then have to wait for your child's Education Health and Care Plan which will tell you whether your local authority thinks a special school like Pioneer would provide the best education for your child. If this is so, they may agree to your child coming here and would then send us a referral letter and papers for us to consider.

4, If your child is Nursery age we can accept them before they have an EHC plan. The SEN team would write a short report outlining your child's difficulties and ask for an Assessment place at Pioneer. If the local authority thinks that Pioneer is the best place for your child they would send us a referral letter and papers for us to consider.

5, We would then consider your child's referral along with others we may have, in terms of age, educational needs and resource requirements matching them to the places we have available. 

6, If on paper it looks as if we can meet your child's needs, we will invite you and your child in for a visit to the school. This visit is important. It gives us an opportunity to meet your child and find out more about them. It also gives us an opportunity to see whether as a school we can provide the things your child needs. 

7, If we have spaces and the resources we need, we will let the local authority know. If we don't have spaces we will let them know too and ask if they would like us to put your child's name on our waiting list until a space becomes available.

8, Your local authority will formally let you know if we have a space for your child.