Spirit unfolding

St Ann’s School, Springfield Road, London W7 3JP

That brief description—and the grey skies above the school in the picture—might suggest a very bleak outlook. In fact, St Ann’s is anything but bleak. Visitors to the school cannot help but be impressed by the commitment of the staff, and the way each and every student is encouraged to develop their potential. These are children that, up until the last decade or so, were never even considered to have a potential, let alone dreams and hopes of their own. Yet on my first visit to the school I met a school-leaver who was hoping to get married, a dream that, nowadays, is certainly in the realm of the possible.

As the inclusion agenda progresses and more pupils with special needs are integrated into the mainstream, schools like St Ann’s find themselves offering places to children with increasingly complex needs. Headteacher Gillian Carver is a champion of inclusion, and St Ann’s has admitted students that have been turned away elsewhere. During my visit, I heard story after story of children with no previous educational experience who were finding socialisation with their peers and the experience of attending a school a stimulus to blossom.