Lime Tree celebrates TES national award for SEND

Lime Tree Primary Academy has won the SEND in a Mainstream Setting prize at the national Times Educational Supplement (TES) Schools Awards 2022.

The school has a real focus on ensuring all children have an ambitious curriculum coupled with high quality inclusive practices which enable all learners to achieve. Teaching assistants are highly trained and well supported. This means that  bespoke interventions are offered which cover academic and sensory needs, mental health, communication, and language emotion (including a therapeutic forest school experience and therapy dog). Lime Tree has a specialist in each key stage to support a range of needs, whether social, emotional, physical, or academic and a bespoke wellbeing team who make regular calls and hold meetings to support families with ‘whatever is needed’. The school also works closely with outside agencies and the local specialist and secondary mainstream schools, and also supporting families on the Trafford SEND Parent Forum.

Margaret Mulholland, judge and special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The unique element of Lime Tree was not just the very detailed case studies of impact over time but, more than anything, the outward-facing role they perform in terms of building partnerships locally to reach both the child and the family and wrap around them, with this notion that it’s not just the child that has got a place at the school, but the family.”

As well as the award for SEND in a Mainstream Setting, Lime Tree was also shortlisted for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Setting of the Year 2022.

Clare Larkin, Head of School at Lime Tree, commented: “We were delighted to have been shortlisted for these coveted awards but to actually win an award is such amazing recognition for the whole Lime Tree family. It really is a team effort here at school and I would like to say a massive thank you to our wonderful students, staff, parents, carers and, of course, the wider community.

“We are truly committed to ensuring all our children are supported with whatever it takes to help them thrive. Through careful nurturing of each child using creativity, innovation, and academic challenge within our school setting, which includes a farm and two Forest School areas, we make this happen. We are so grateful to our local community and partners too who help us to achieve this.”

Lime Tree is part of Bright Futures Educational Trust and CEO, John Stephens, added: “We are absolutely thrilled for Lime Tree. This is a well-deserved achievement by the fantastic Lime Tree team who are relentless in their work for and commitment to every child, truly living our Trust vision: ‘the best for everyone, the best from everyone’.” 

This latest award win follows Lime Tree’s success at the Pearson Education Awards where the school achieved Bronze in The Award for Making a Difference – Primary School of the Year.