"A whole class of employable students": Finding passion and potential at Northgate School

As we begin a new series exploring how technology is helping children and young people with special educational needs (SEND), Mick Hayes from Northgate School shares his experience of fostering employability among young people with SEND.

I teach ICT and Media as Level 1 qualifications across all of our sixth form groups at Northgate, aged 16 to 18. We have classes of around 13 or 14, but within each group we have students with a diverse range of special needs.

Media consists of both a Level 1 qualification with each student planning, creating and evaluating a podcast which plays in our public areas on-site, including the Beehive Cafe. Students have to use skills such as planning using flowcharts and assessing what the audience wants. They create a podcast on a subject they like and then evaluate their work. These are fairly high level skills for this age and type of learner, but they've all proved their ability really well.

We give our students a chance to try out as many ‘toys in the box’ as possible.

We have a range of experiences available, like 3D design using the Tinkercad (computer-aided design) programme which the students can then 3D print on our printer.

So they'll design and print their items - it's a great experience for the student to get a chance to try those.

We've got a VR headset to experience and to use art programmes in VR. Students can also produce animations and other graphic design. Creating their own multi-track music, programming a Raspberry Pi or Arduino - there are lots of chances to develop themselves and find what they like doing. This is the kind of lesson I would love to have had when I was in school.

We've also got tools like a Sound-Beam, which is designed for students with limited mobility to play an instrument, so if a person can just move their head, the beam will pick that up and they can control the sound; this helps to provide accessibility to music for all our students.

Each student will choose their own projects and what they want to work on and students often enjoy those projects so much they continue doing them in their own time. During lockdown, we would hold a virtual lesson on podcasting and they'd often carry on after the lesson had finished because they just loved working on it.

We had a student last year who was really into stop-motion animation. He brought in what he was working on and shared with the other students. We've got a few programmers. We get lots of students who have that programming kind of brain; I want them to try things out, for them to leave here with a passion for their subject. Some students will then go off to college and continue to develop their skills.

When it's time for our students to move on, we look after their next step and it's great to hear when their confidence develops further. Some students this year are going on to college to study Design, ICT... all sorts of things.

One student has been accepted onto the electrical engineering course at college. He's got fantastic motor skills - really accurate, more patience than I could ever have! - he will sit there and just take things apart and put them back together.

What I love is trying to let our students know that most people don't know they have special needs. I try to push them into adapting to the world around them rather than expecting the world to adapt. Because I happen to have one hand myself, and that makes me really determined. My life has always been over-proving myself.

I have empathy but I also have that ‘tough love’ that you shouldn't give up, and I think that's been proven by the students we've had that are either working or have gone on to do well in college.

Many of our students' strengths are really impressive, and a lot of them have extreme accuracy with information like remembering dates and times.

We all have special needs in one way or another; it's just if the volume of those special needs become more pronounced we may need additional help.

What some of our students lack sometimes are the fundamentals of using ICT, and that's where I try to fill in the gaps for them.

They'll be doing something mind-blowing on a computer but, as a contrast, can’t find where they've saved a document or what they called it. So I teach them basics such as file management as one of the many fundamental skills needed for employment.

Everything we do is all about employability - I never want anyone to say they've had a fantastic time without learning anything. It's about giving our students independence, interpersonal skills and confidence.

Occasionally I will find something that grounds me, like I'll spot a student who's having real difficulty putting a piece of paper into a plastic wallet and I'll notice their hand-eye and motor difficulties stopping them from doing something that other people would find simple. That then becomes something I need to work with them on. But it's that diverse range of unusual and different challenges that makes this job so interesting.

If you've ever tried to have a party for your own child and they've invited a load of their friends for a couple of hours, and afterwards you feel ‘trashed’ - it's a bit like that, but every day. You've got to adapt to everyone's different needs - in the corner you might have someone who's upset about something or there might be a medical issue, but at the end of it all you've got a whole class of employable students and it makes you want to go again for the next year.

It's the most rewarding job I've ever had. It's also the most tiring job I've had, but I want our students to be able to do what they want to do and start to break into mainstream media. I don't think there should be anything holding them back. I want to help our students to realise they still have so much to offer, I want them to believe in themselves and to realise their true potential.

David BevanDigital Northants stories