All schools are required to provide information about the arrangements for taking disabled pupils into the school, the steps taken to ensure they are treated on equal terms with other pupils and the facilities provided to help them with access to the school. As a Community School, we are bound by the County's Admissions Policy, which ensures that there is no discrimination against pupils with disabilities.
Highworth with its ARP/HID, is in a special position and has a higher proportion of pupils with disabilities than most schools. The ARP/HID provides an excellent range of specialist facilities for the hearing impaired and, in consideration of them, we also have fire alarms that flash as well as ring. Signing Assistants support the signing children in the classroom to maximise their access to the curriculum and sound field systems and radio aids are used to enable children to access spoken language
All disabled pupils are fully integrated into the school. The hearing impaired children and children with an Education, Health Care Plan for other reasons are only withdrawn for separate support when the lesson is of such a nature that they would not be able to access the learning.
The main entrance of the school is accessible for someone in a wheelchair. We also have a toilet suitable for wheelchair bound visitors.
We have been working on improving the facilities which are available for people with disabilities – and have achieved some of the aims of our Accessibility plan. We have also been able to incorporate a ramp in our corridor extension. This enables people using wheelchairs to travel directly from the top playground to the hall and admin corridor.
