SML College

As Chair of Governors of the College I was disappointed to see the review below where a visiting parent did not like our safeguarding procedures. As he says we use the same principles as mainstream schools. While we love having visitors any adult on the premises must either be supervised by a member of staff or show that they have had a DBS check. For a visiting parent to be in a room with another child and not be supervised (which apparently happened) is never allowed. Our parents welcome our rigorous safeguarding processes - and when I have been round with parent visitors they have always accepted these. To re-iterate - we welcome visitors and we work very closely with our parents to support them - including making certain that their children are safe with us.

We looked around and met the Coordinator with a view to our home-educated autistic son joining the college. The philosophy of self-directed learning fitted with our own approach and we had high hopes. Unfortunately the flexibility and empathy directed at the children did not seem to extend to the parents. We requested to be able to stay in the room for the first few sessions to make sure he was settling. We were refused without explanation. We requested if he could start part-time to ease himself into a group learning situation as he was completely unused to it. We were refused without explanation. When I said he would get very tired at first I was told curtly that he could sleep somewhere there-something my son would never be able to do. When my wife went into the arts club room to see if our son was alright, there was only him and one other child there, she was told off by the coordinator. It was very disappointing and just the sort of thing we had encountered from mainstream schools. I still don't understand the attitude. No doubt other parents have had a different experience but this was ours. We wanted it to work but ran into the sort of inflexibility and dogmatism that we had encountered in state provision. Perplexing.