School Information

Timings of the school day

8.30 - 9.00	BREAKFAST CLUB (optional)
9.00am	Start of School Day
9.00 - 9.15	Personal Development (PD) Activity
9.15 - 9.20	Morning Time
9.00 - 10.05	Period 1
10.05 - 10.50	Period 2
10.50 - 11.10	Break Time
11.10 - 11.55	Period 3
11.55 - 12.40	Period 4
12.40 - 1.10	Lunch Time
1.10 - 1.55	Period 5
1.55 - 2.40	Period 6
2.40pm	End of School Day

Breakfast club

Breakfast Club is open between 8.30 – 9am .

It is open and free of charge for all on site Lavender students and offers a variety of bagels, cereal and fruit.

Dress Code

We want every student to feel comfortable within Lavender. Therefore, do not have a rigid dress code, but we expect our students to wear clothing appropriate to a learning environment:

For example:

shirt and blue/ black/ grey jumper
Black/ grey generic trousers/ skirt
Black generic trainers or shoes
Jewellery should be kept to a minimum. Earrings should be studs or small hoops. Large earrings are not acceptable, as they pose a health and safety risk.
Suitable generic bags and coats
No hoodies or hats or clothes with logos
Flip-flops, sliders, slippers or any other shoes that are not strapped to your feet are unsafe in school as they present a health and safety risk
Strapless tops and tops with thin straps and hot pant style shorts are not allowed and no underwear should be on display
Pyjamas are not considered appropriate clothing for a learning environment

The final decision on whether a student’s attire is acceptable lies with the Lavender SLT team and dress code infringements will be pointed out to the students concerned via their tutor or SLT member.

We ask that students bring in a clean change of clothes for PE: shorts or jogging bottoms and t shirt for afternoon SDO’s.

Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 prohibits discrimination against an individual based on the protected characteristics, which include age, sex, disability, race, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity, and gender reassignment.

To avoid discrimination, our school will:

Allow all pupils to have long hair (though we reserve the right to ask for this to be tied back)
Allow all pupils to style their hair in a way that is appropriate for school and makes them feel most comfortable
Allow pupils to wear headscarves and/or other religious garments
Allow pupils with sensory or physical needs to make reasonable adaptations to their clothing depending on their specific needs

School Timetable

Whole School Timetable Autumn 2024

Lunch Menu

Support for Young People who self-harm or experience suicidal ideation

Supporting young people who self-harm or experience suicidal Ideation and supporting young people in the vicinity of others who self-harm or experience suicidal ideation

Within the cohort of students at Lavender, we can have a high proportion who are currently self- harming or experience suicidal ideation. Our priority is the safety and well being of our students. We use the Merton Safeguarding Children Partnership Protocol for supporting the individual and have also developed additional practice to ensure the whole student cohort is protected from an individual act. Therefore, we insist upon the following:

New self-harming scars are dressed and then covered by clothing.
Hospital experiences and previous self-harm attempts are not to be discussed within Lavender with other students. Every student has a trusted adult with whom they can off load to if needed
Phones are not to be used within Lavender unless following the phone guidelines. There must be no sharing of self-harm or controversial sites between students at any time
Students must not bring pencil sharpeners or compasses into school; these will be handed out when needed in class
Staff are vigilant within their classrooms checking daily for any potential vehicle for self- harm and removing them (sharpeners, paper clips etc)

Accessibility Plan

Aims

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 pupils with disabilities can participate in the curriculum
Improve the physical environment of the school to enable pupils with disabilities to take better advantage of education, benefits, facilities and services provided
Improve the availability of accessible information to pupils with disabilities

Our school aims to treat all its pupils fairly and with respect. This involves providing access and opportunities for all pupils without discrimination of any kind.

Lavender provides education for all students who live within the borough of Merton and are unable to attend their home school because of medical need. For full details about how we aim to achieve this, please go to our vision page: https://www.melbury.merton.sch.uk/Melbury-College-Vision-and-Values/ and welcome from the head of Lavender: https://melbury.greenhousecms.co.uk/Welcome-from-Headteacher/.

The plan will be made available online on the school website, and paper copies are available upon request.

Our school is also committed to ensuring staff are trained in equality issues with reference to the Equality Act 2010, including understanding disability issues.

The school supports any available partnerships to develop and implement the plan. For example, working closely with Merton’s Inclusion service and support from the borough SENDCo forums.

Our school’s complaints procedure covers the accessibility plan. If you have any concerns relating to accessibility in school, the complaints procedure sets out the process for raising these concerns.

We have included a range of stakeholders in the development of this accessibility plan, including parents, staff, pupils and governors of the school

Legislation and guidance

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 they have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ adverse effect on their 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 pupils with disabilities under the Equality Act 2010, to alleviate any substantial disadvantage that a pupil with disabilities faces in comparison with a pupil without disabilities. This can include, for example, the provision of an auxiliary aid or adjustments to premises.

This policy complies with our funding agreement and articles of association.

Action Plan

This action plan sets out the aims of our accessibility plan in accordance with the Equality Act 2010.

AIM	CURRENTGOOD PRACTICE	OBJECTIVES	ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN	PERSON RESPONSIBLE	DATE TO COMPLETE ACTIONS BY	SUCCESS CRITERIA
Increase access to the curriculum for pupils with a disability	Our school offers a differentiated curriculum for all pupils We use resources tailored to the needs of pupils who require support to access the curriculum Curriculum resources include examples of people with disabilities Targets are set effectively and are appropriate for pupils with additional needs The curriculum is reviewed to make sure it meets the needs of all pupils	Through continued CPD, staff will remain confident in offering a differentiated curriculum and resources to address all the differing needs of the pupils. The effectiveness of the curriculum continues to be monitored	HoD and SLT will continue to offer internal and external CPD to all staff The quality of Education lead will continue to monitor our curriculum, through learning walks, observation, book looks and student feedback	Curriculum lead Quality of Education Lead, SENCO and Head teacher	Ongoing	Evidence of differentiation in every class
Improve and maintain access to the physical environment	The environment is adapted to the needs of pupils as required. This includes: Corridor width Disabled toilets Wheelchair access from every garden facing classroom into the garden Library shelves at wheelchair-accessible height in some classrooms	To create more wheelchair accessible height bookshelves in all classrooms	Disabled parking bays	Head of facilities Head teacher	Sep 25 Sep 24	Parking for disabled students next to the premises More inclusive reading opportunities within every classroom
Improve the delivery of information to pupils with a disability	Our school uses a range of communication methods to make sure information is accessible. This includes: Visual timetables Pictorial representations Internal signage Large print resources Different coloured backgrounds for classroom resources	To maintain knowledge base re current pedagogy on improvement of information to pupils with disability and implement new, evidenced strategies

Monitoring Arrangements

This document will be reviewed every 3 years, but may be reviewed and updated more frequently if necessary. It will be reviewed by the head teacher of Lavender and the Executive Head of Melbury .

Links with other policies

This accessibility plan is linked to the following policies and documents:

Risk assessment policy
Health and safety policy
Equality information and objectives (public sector equality duty) statement for publication
Special educational needs (SEN) information report
SEND policy
Supporting pupils with medical conditions policy

Pupil Premium

Pupil Premium Application Form

PP 2024-25

Accessibility

The Centre is single story and fully accessible by wheelchair, but if you have any questions, please get in in touch with the office before visiting

Testimonials

At Parents Evening in Feb 23, we asked parents to jot down our greatest strengths. Here are some of the replies:

- Kindness, compassion, child-centred thinking and decisions, understanding and communication

- Friendly and polite. Wellbeing as well as academic. Looking at needs.

- Understanding

- Supportive staff who understand my child’s difficulties

- Support for children and parents. Calm and welcoming

- Understanding my child’s needs. Adaptive as needed and being responsive. Nurturing environment.

- Helping my daughter to feel safe

- Resilience, humour and perseverance

- Open to treating each child as an individual and prepared to tailor approach to achieve their best

- Listening and understanding

- Compassionate staff, accommodating individual needs, making child feel comfortable and safe.

We asked for any additional comments:

You are a fantastic team. Thank you for everything you are doing, we really appreciate it.

I can’t thank staff at Lavender enough. My child is still improving. Compared to where we were a few months ago, it’s been a massive turnaround

A parent of a student who returned to their home school for sixth form wrote to us in Feb 23:

***** is getting on great at mainstream sixth form. The school are very supportive, and ***** has lots of flexibility to enable him to succeed. He is taking real ownership of his learning and communicating well with teachers when he needs support. He’s enjoying Psychology and Sociology, and doing particularly well at Psychology with consistent A’s for exams and course work. And he’s loving playing with his band mates again in Music, and has a good group of friends, including a few new ones.

It’s all turned out far better than any of us could have imagined, much of which is due to his hard work but, without question, is also due to the support he got at Lavender. We are so grateful.

A parent of a student who moved onto sixth form college in Sep 23 wrote:

It's such a credit to you and your lovely team that you helped her through and to achieve the results to take her upto A level

You’ve given her a strong foundation for the future and kept hope for her-and us-through tough times. We’ll always be grateful for that.

Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice - Data Protection Act 1998

Melbury College is a data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act. We

collect personal information from you and may receive information about you from your

previous school and the Learning Records Service. We hold this personal data to:

 Support your learning;

 Monitor and report on your progress;

 Provide appropriate pastoral care, and

 Assess how well we are doing.

Information about you that we hold includes your contact details, national curriculum

assessment results, attendance information and personal characteristics such as your

ethnic group, any special educational needs you may have and relevant medical

information. If you are enrolling for post 14 qualifications the Learning Records Service

will give us your unique learner number (ULN) and may also give us details about your

learning or qualifications.

In addition for Secondary and Middle deemed Secondary Schools

Once you are aged 13 or over, we are required by law to pass on certain information to

providers of youth support services in your area. This is the local authority support

service for young people aged 13 to 19 in England. We must provide the names and

addresses of you and your parent(s), and any further information relevant to the

support services’ role. We may also share data with post 16 providers to secure

appropriate support on entry to post 16 provision.

However, parent(s) can ask that no information beyond names, addresses and your

date of birth be passed to the support service. This right transfers to you on your 16th

birthday. Please tell the office if you wish to opt out of this arrangement. For more

information about young people’s services, please go to the National Careers Service

page at

https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/aboutus/Pages/default.aspx

We will not give information about you to anyone without your consent unless

the law and our policies allow us to.

We are required by law to pass some information about you to our Local Authority (LA)

and the Department for Education.

If you want to receive a copy of the information about you that we hold or share,

please contact Melrose School.

If you need more information about how the LA and DfE store and use your

information, then please go to the following websites:

http://www.merton.gov.uk/council/dp-foi.htm or

https://www.gov.uk/data-protection-how-we-collect-and-share-research-data

If you cannot access these websites, please contact the LA or DfE as follows:

 London Borough of Merton

Information Governance Team

Civic Centre

Morden

SM4 5DX

Email: data.protection@merton.gov.uk

Telephone: 020 8545 4875

 Public Communications Unit

Department for Education

Sanctuary Buildings

Great Smith Street

London

SW1P 3BT

Website: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/departmentfor-

education

Email: http://www.education.gov.uk/help/contactus

Telephone: 0370 000 2288