Special Schools
Milestone Academy
Milestone Academy is pleased to announce that we are now returning to pre-Covid styles of operation, not only in our internal arrangements but also by taking our pupils out beyond the Milestone Academy footprint . For example, Canterbury class went to Bore Place, where they experienced working in an agricultural environment, and this term Scotney and Eynsford classes have been there too. Meadow and Empire classes have been attending swimming lessons at North West Kent College’s swimming pool. We also proudly witnessed Sparta and Vikings classes’ visit to New Ash Green Village to perform some community litter picking. School photos have been taken and parent consultations took place on 30th June.
More broadly, Milestone Academy is celebrating a huge number of recent successes in terms of our learning, community participation and inclusion in the activities of other LAT schools. We are particularly keen to highlight, with thanks, the participation of Milestone @ The Leigh students in the Leigh Academy Sports Day. Huge thanks are due to Sarah Brown and her team at M@L, as well as Mr Pickett and his team at The Leigh, for enabling safe participation in the day. We are delighted that three M@L students will be taking part in the final race week in July.
Phases across the academy have been using a much-needed break in the weather to take part in some extraordinary activities. Phase 3 organised a highly-successful Space Day, featuring a planetarium visit which provided an extraordinary learning experience for our students, capped off by a space-themed party and games on our field. Many thanks to our Phase Leader, Noleen Donaghy, for making all this happen so seamlessly.
Congratulations are also in order for another of our students, Jennifer, who successfully applied for and has been awarded a £500 grant from Grow Wild. This charity promotes the cause of British plant life, and highlights the importance of our connected ecosystems. Jennifer will be taking a travelling British plant life road show to Milestone Academy’s primary classes and hopes to roll this plan out to LAT primary schools in the next academic year.
We are pleased to announce that the Milestone Academy careers website has also been undergoing some updates. We believe that careers education encompasses so much more than the job students will have when they are older; rather, it is about maximising independence and learning how to access the world. This is especially important after the limited access of the past two academic years. We are also proud to be embarking on our journey towards our Quality in Careers Standard via Investors in Careers. Keep a lookout for more exciting announcements in future.
Finally, we are now officially a United Nations Rights-Respecting School, having been awarded the bronze (rights-committed) level of this prestigious accreditation.
A Rights-Respecting School is one in which rights are at the centre of the school’s culture and ethos and are based on the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Kingdom in 1992. Many thanks to Kyle Marsh, our interim Phase 3 Assistant Principal, for expertly leading our ongoing pursuit of this valuable whole-school award and the cultural development it is generating at Milestone Academy.
Snowfields Academy
As we come to the end of our first year at Snowfields Academy, this is a good opportunity to reflect on a rollercoaster experience. We are incredibly proud of our achievements in the midst of a global pandemic: opening in an unfinished building, creating a new team, instilling our culture and values and ensuring our students are safe, happy and learning.
For those who have been able to visit Snowfields or Bearsted, you will know that our buildings are conjoined. We operate with some shared spaces and staff, yet each academy runs independently and the shared nature of our building provides excellent opportunities for both academies. Bearsted Primary and Snowfields Academy building has been nominated for a DfE Education estates award. As Neil Willis has said: “Location and design have delivered significant tangible, inclusive learning opportunities to access both academies while allowing each to shape its own identity. Sharing learning, administration and community spaces has produced a financial dividend that has been reinvested for the benefit of every pupil and the wider community”. Watch this space to see if our fabulous building wins this prestigious award.
Jayden, one of our year 8 students, wrote a wonderful poem as part of a scheme of work in English. He has kindly agreed for me to share this with you all:
I found the road
The road to Snowfields Academy
I look at Snowfields Academy from the eyes of an Autistic child
This is what I see
A community
I have this poem framed in my office and it is a real reminder to me everyday of the difference Snowfields Academy has made to the lives of so many of our students and families in such a short space of time. This makes us incredibly proud of everything we have achieved, and ambitious to achieve even more for the benefit of all our current, and future, students.
We welcomed our new minibuses recently, which means our students can finally get out into the community. Our year 7s have taken part in Forest Schools in our local community and have loved the opportunity for outdoor learning in the woods. They have built camps, made bug houses, built bridges and shelters and, most of all, worked as a team trying new challenges.
We have also taken part in the first birthday celebrations for Invicta Court, our neighbouring care home for the elderly. Some of our students sent poems and drawings, and a small group entertained the residents with songs sung from their back gardens while the residents listened from their bedrooms and balconies. This is a great link that we are developing and we are busy training our staff and some students to become dementia friends so that we will be ready to work more closely with them when Covid allows us to.
On Thursday 24th June, 11 students from Years 7, 8 and 9 attended a cricket festival at Kings Hill Cricket Club organised by Kent School Games. The students played as two teams, enjoying four games of cricket during the day in which they played against two other schools. Throughout the day, the students demonstrated outstanding communication skills, incredible resilience and brilliant sportsmanship. The year 7 team won three of their four games, while the year 8 and 9 teams won two of their four. Overall, both teams played incredibly well and their teamwork and cooperation was recognised and appreciated by all who attended. A fantastic day out and first sporting event for Snowfields Academy! Let’s hope this is the first of many.
“Location and design have delivered significant tangible, inclusive learning opportunities to access both academies while allowing each to shape its own identity. Sharing learning, administration and community spaces has produced a financial dividend that has been reinvested for the benefit of every pupil and the wider community.”
Neil Willis, Leigh Academies Trust