"Making the impossible possible": Billing Brook School's innovative approach to supporting students
Nicola Holland, assistant head teacher at Billing Brook School, explains her passion for technology, the partnership working that has produced results for her students with special educational needs and her vision for the future of an immersive innovation hub.
Billing Brook is a school for children with special educational needs aged from 4 to 18.
Our pupils have a whole range of cognitive disabilities and about 70% of our pupils are autistic.
We've got some students with ADHD, some with Global Developmental Delay. Increasingly, our cohorts are developing in their complexities and they're coming through with multiple diagnoses.
I started in 2009, and I've never left. It's one of those places that, when you get into it, you live it and then it's forever evolving and changing. In that way it's like technology. I've always been really interested in the evolution of technology and how we can keep up to date with people pushing boundaries around the world.
I've been working with Rebecca from VR Therapies in Northampton, taking some of our students for a weekly virtual reality session to enhance the curriculum. We're trying to support their mental health and wellbeing and thinking about opportunities for employment, fine-tuning some of their aspirations and showing them what might be possible for them in the future. We've been doing that for quite some time and having fabulous results, seeing lots of different things coming through from the sessions. Everything was far exceeding what we would often see in the natural classroom.
The pupils were able to work independently and it was all very personal to what they needed. We also brought in a lot of our regulation strategies - for one session, for example, we entered into a rage room because I know I've got quite a lot of students who need to let their emotions loose. After that, because we felt that their emotions would be quite heightened, we got them doing a plank challenge with me so they could start to bring their energy levels down a bit. And then we went into a guided meditation session.
The pupils could also see what it might be like to work in different environments - maybe as a mechanic or in a cafe, so they were processing how that felt. As an observer, I was able to gain a lot of information regarding the students which then allowed me to generate a report to support staff in school. I noticed a lot regarding behaviours or things they needed or how their cognitive processing skills were actively firing or not firing in certain ways. That became a really beneficial session.
Following those sessions, Rebecca contacted me to ask if we'd be interested in working with her along with Cafe Track and Digital Northants to trial a transport and transition project so students could learn more about travelling on a bus to school.
I'd seen first-hand the benefits of VR and could see the students' ability to retain the sessions. For a lot of our pupils, that's something that can be quite difficult.
The study was about allowing our students to feel more confident and less anxious about transitioning to a new environment, and potentially using public transport in the long run. Initially, I might have somebody going into that session with their body language quite uptight and tense, rigid in their movements. As we put the students into an experience or give them an opportunity to do some problem-solving or guided meditation, we could see their body visibly relax.
And we know, as students, if they're better regulated, they're more likely to learn so if I can get our pupils to a point of feeling relaxed in that environment or scenario, we are then more likely to be able to teach them and help them to learn skills than if they are feeling anxious.
The thought that we could potentially support our students through technology was a no-brainer. Then it was a case of thinking about all the processes involved. There was work on memory, problem solving, hearing the children's voices.
We did a lot of questions with them and got them to think about their energy. We focus a lot on energy in terms of whether we feel maybe a bit too fizzy or is our energy too high, rather than linking it to emotions, because emotions can be quite abstract.
The VR allowed us to really support the students in memorising tasks and problem-solving skills, In one of the last sessions, students were able to say how they were feeling, what their expectations are of being on the bus and where they like to sit. That insight and being able to verbalise and share some of those things then allowed us to better support them moving forwards.
We had a group of four year 9 pupils doing the pilot study. That included autistic students and students with varying communication - some who were quite vocal, some who were quiet and weren't able to vocalise everything they were thinking and feeling.
The moment that really sticks out for me is that even now one of the pupils involved will say to me "are we going to do that VR thing again?" This is a pupil who doesn't recall things on a minute by minute or week by week basis. The fact that they've recalled something that happened last year just shows the power of this experience. It was clearly such an engaging session for them.
The power is that you're making the impossible possible. Rebecca at VR Therapies spoke to me about a young autistic student who said she wanted to be a wildlife photographer. She didn't think she would ever be able to achieve it. The attitude we share, both at Billing Brook and VR Therapies, is "let's make that possible" so Rebecca put her into VR on a safari and this young girl was able to take screenshots so she had a portfolio of photos she had taken of different animals.
That was her dream made possible. It gave her a level of accomplishment, she felt successful and just imagine the confidence she developed as a result of having achieved that. That would have given her the feeling that other things might be possible and she could hold on to the positive energy she felt in that moment and transfer it to something else.
One thing we're still hoping to secure to move this forwards is the use of an immersive environment, so students can experience some of the sounds, some of the smells. That would ease the transition from virtual reality to a real environment. We saw so much potential to become a centre of training and development for children with special educational needs for the wider region if we could create an innovation hub here at Billing Brook.
Imagine if we had the government, councils or businesses funding a hub to support our students to reduce anxiety when getting out and about - it would mean they're more likely to access shops, to invest in the places around them, to be involved in leisure opportunities. There are a lot of wider gains to be made, adding value to a lot of lives.
Once you've seen the power of technology to help people, it inspires you. So let's work together. Whether you're interested in the monetary value, which is vast, or, as for me, it's more about the wellbeing and learning of our students, and how we can give them a better quality of life and education, there's so much to gain.
Want to know more?
Find out more about Billing Brook School and VR Therapies.
Nicola and Rebecca will be delivering the keynote speech this year at our free innovation showcase event, Merged Futures 6, on Friday 14 June - ticket details coming soon.
Read our story on employability in IT and Media for students at Northgate School and The Bee Hive.