Accessibility Policy and Plan 2025 2026
Accessibility Policy and Plan
Policy details
Date created - November 2020
Date reviewed and updated - September 2025
Next review date policy - September 2028
Next review date plan - September 2026
Contents
Involvement and Consultation 2
Vision and Values
Co-op Academy Southfield is committed to ensuring equality of education and opportunity for all -
including students, staff and all those involved in the school community. We aim to develop a
culture of inclusion and diversity in which people feel free to disclose their disability, are proud
of their identity and are able to participate fully in school life.
We have high expectations of all our students and aim to offer teaching throughout the
school which enables our students to become as confident, resilient and independent as possible.
Co-op Academy Southfield, we believe that diversity is a strength, which should be respected and
celebrated by all those who learn, work and visit here.
Legislation and guidance
The Equality Act 2010 replaced all existing equality legislation, including the Disability
Discrimination Act. This document meets the requirements of schedule 10 of the Equality Act 2010 and the Department for Education (DfE) Guidance for schools on the Equality Act 2010.
The Equality Act 2010 defines an individual as disabled if he or she has a physical or mental
impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ adverse effect on his or her ability to
undertake normal day to day activities.
Under the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice, ‘long-term’ is
defined as ‘a year or more’ and ‘substantial’ is defined as ‘more than minor or trivial’. The
definition includes sensory impairments such as those affecting sight or hearing, and long-term
health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, epilepsy and cancer.
Schools are required to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for students with disabilities under the
Equality Act 2010, to alleviate any substantial disadvantage that a disabled student faces in
comparison with non-disabled students. This can include, for example, the provision of an
auxiliary aid or adjustments to premises.
Schools are required under the Equality Act 2010 to have an accessibility plan. The purpose of
the plan is to:
- Increase the extent to which disabled students can participate in the curriculum
- Improve the physical environment of the school to enable disabled students to take better
advantage of education, benefits, facilities and services provided
- Improve the availability of accessible information to disabled students.
Involvement and Consultation
Co-op Academy Southfield works closely with the Local Authority and in partnership with external agencies and support services to ensure that all of our current and future students can access the full range of educational provision that we have to offer.
Where appropriate we will seek specialist advice to inform the planning of reasonable adjustments, but most reasonable adjustments can be resolved within the school setting. We have access to and support from various NHS professional services, with nurses from the Special Needs School Nursing Service on site daily, and other services visiting, including consultants holding clinics within school. This enables the students to attend with minimal disruption to their school day and in a familiar environment.
Feedback from parents/carers and student voice is taken seriously and is welcomed.
Accessibility by design
Co-op Academy Southfield is predominantly housed in a building shared with Co-op Academy Grange, and occupies space which was purpose-built as a special school, and as such was built under building regulations to meet the needs of its special population. It is a PFI school built through the Building Schools for the Future scheme. As a PFI school the maintenance of this building is the responsibility of Amey FM. Any building alterations have to be carried out in line with the mechanisms in the PFI
contract.
All alterations to the non-PFI building are planned with accessibility for all users in mind. The additional teaching space built on that site is also fully accessible and the decoration is appropriate for students with communication and interaction difficulties to enhance the learning experience for them. These are students who would struggle to access the main building space due to their sensory needs.
Accessibility Plan
This Accessibility Plan relates to the key aspects of curriculum, physical environment, and accessible
information.
Curriculum
At Co-op Academy Southfield we value our students and their uniqueness. We will never let anything get in the way of our high aspirations for them.
To make sure that they achieve all that they are capable of, we will ensure that our curriculum is literacy rich and is broad and balanced so that the students have exposure to a curriculum that engages and challenges them regardless of their background.
Our curriculum will be sequenced so that the students are taught firm foundations and that subsequent learning builds upon what the students already know and can do. We want the students to become responsible citizens who can make positive contributions in adulthood and so we ensure that they are fully equipped with the skills and knowledge to thrive in modern Britain.
We will make sure that they are supported in a range of situations external to the school environment too so that we are contributing to their personal development as well as their academic development.
The Co-op Values will be the golden thread running through our endeavours and our approaches.
Physical Environment
At Co-op Academy Southfield we continue to improve and maintain access to the physical environment of the school, adding specialist facilities as necessary – this includes the provision of specialist equipment to enable access to education.
Any proposed change to the physical environment has regard for building accessibility, furniture, signage and resources, including ICT.
We also:
- Ensure that facilities are available for students with sensory impairments, e.g. certain internal signage uses Braille, symbols and objects of reference.
- Provide sufficient disabled parking near the main entrance.
- Provide hygiene rooms with facilities including hoist, changing table, shower and sluice.
- Equip our school minibuses to enable all students to participate in off-site activities, including wheelchair users.
- Strive to ensure that no student is excluded from school due to their disability or difficulties.
- Have effective emergency and evacuation procedures in place, including fire lifts and evacuation chairs.
Access to information
We also aim to improve the availability of accessible information to students, staff, parents and visitors with disabilities by;
- Having an admissions policy which gives equal rights to all potential applications regardless of
- ability or disability.
- Focusing on using appropriate communication that meets individual needs with students and parents.
- Celebrating and promoting key events such as the annual Barry Holden Memorial Games.
- Circulating Education, Health & Care Plans and other plans to all appropriate staff members.
- Maintaining close links between agencies in order to receive advice and support our students and their families.
- Having an accessible website.
Priority areas 2025 - 2026 | ||
Curriculum - Ensure all students with SEND can access the curriculum appropriately | ||
Identified issue: The curriculum will continue to provide structure and detail for the teachers to teach purposeful, engaging lessons.
| The knowledge and skills planners will be worked upon collaboratively in order to support teachers’ greater understanding of the curriculum design. | This will be implemented through the CPD programme. Where appropriate, CPD will focus upon cohorts to offer a bespoke offer. QA processes will capture success. |
Experiences Plan- Improve the offer of enrichment activities which are explicitly linked to the curriculum | ||
Identified issue: pupils with the most complex needs do not access as many trips or encounter as many purposeful enriching experiences within the academy. | Stunning starts and fantastic finishes will be woven into the curriculum that will be bespoke to key stages and cohorts. | Trips, visitors and enrichment activities will be planned and tracked. This will be led by Key Stage Directors. |
All staff have awareness of their role in facilitating high quality learning | ||
Identified issue: staff will have a stronger understanding of the learning that is taking place in the classroom in order to promote the development of knowledge and skills. | Staff have bespoke training to understand the refined progression steps (assessment documents). LSA have PPDR targets linked to the role as ‘teaching and learning support’ and their accountability in the process. | Whole school CPD will reiterate the focus on knowledge and skills and how all staff can record progress. Learning walks will identify further CPD and areas of success. Engagement snapshots will be undertaken as part of drop in sessions. |
This plan should be read in conjunction with our Equality Objectives Statement and Action Plan 2025-2026 and Co-op Academy Southfield Local Offer.
Review of 2024-2025 plan | ||
Curriculum - Ensure all students with SEND can access the curriculum appropriately | ||
Outcome/impact: The Fundamentals of the Quality of Teaching and Learning at Southfield School were created with the teachers to improve access to the curriculum. The document focussed on 4 areas: Routines and Structure, Communication, Relationships, Behaviours for Learning. QA through learning walks and lesson observations saw increased implementation of these Fundamentals in particular the Routine and structure. Music cues were introduced as part of the Fundamentals to support transitions between lesson and activity.. The curriculum started to align with our feeder school in its offer of subject areas through visits to Delius. Year group themes were discontinued and a Key stage theme introduced KS3 What can I share about myself? KS4 What can I do to look after myself? KS5 What can I do to be an active citizen? These served as a hook for the subject content and a focus for their learning journey in their key stage as students moved into adulthood. The curriculum continued to be refined with sufficiently detailed information for all classroom leads to understand the knowledge and skills to deliver engaging lessons. Progression steps were developed for all subjects to show outcomes for different cohorts of students- staff found these useful to chunk the learning and be confident in their knowledge of the next steps. Curriculum work with a speech & language specialist improved staff understanding of the Fundamentals of communication for our most profound and complex learners. We developed the Learning Roots for the PMLD cohort with a focus on connections- with their environment and others. CPD was delivered to upskill staff and feedback showed an increased confidence using planning documents. | ||
Physical environment - Improve the physical environment of the school to enable students with physical disabilities to take better advantage of education, benefits, facilities and services provided and to increase their independence where appropriate | ||
Outcome/impact: It was identified that the classroom environments for our most profound learners were very clinical and lacked a welcoming feel. Staff were asked to consider how their classroom could be an immersive, sensory-rich, and fully accessible environment for students to learn through exploratory, communication rich activities. Staff went out of school to see different schools and came up with designs for their own room. Staff researched specific resources, furniture, and adaptive strategies to transform the space into a welcoming, engaging place students would want to be in. A substantial amount of money was shared between 7 classrooms to improve their environments. | ||
Accessibility of information - Improve the processes for ensuring that pupil voice is an embedded feature of our work so that those pupils with SEND can have their voices heard in a wider context than the academy | ||
Outcome/impact: The school had an active student council which met each half term. This was led by a pastoral lead who also worked closely with families- meeting parents and carers at coffee mornings. Having the same leader for both student and parent meetings ensured that the school’s goals are supported at home. This turns student feedback into real action and helps families and teachers work together as a respectful, unified team. Taking part in big events like the Co op Eco Conference or Musica Spectacular was a life-changing experience that goes beyond lessons in school. By letting students lead these projects they became the leaders. This hands-on process helps them feel proud of their work, as they see their own ideas turn into something they can share with the wider community. |
Accessibility Policy and Plan 2024-2025 |