Welcome to Mapledown Secondary school!

Working and Learning together to Achieve our Best... Respect, Empower & Thrive

Welcome to the Mapledown School website. We hope that you find all the information you require and that our website will provide you with a good understanding of our school, and how hard staff and students work together to ensure students achieve their potential. 

We are a proud secondary school serving students aged 11-19 with Special Educational Needs (including Autism and/or profound or severe learning, health and care needs). We recognise that adopting a personalised approach is a critical key for each student’s development. We invest a significant amount of time assessing the students’ needs prior to their joining the school, so that we can ensure students are placed in the most suitable class and/or provision, either on our main site or in one of our satellite provisions. This approach is repeated throughout their time with us. Our aim is to discover the unique voice within each of our students through the education and curriculum we offer them, so that we can ensure that education is as bespoke as possible, and they are prepared for life beyond Mapledown. 

Each day our students bring their own unique energy into their school. In turn we ensure that they receive a high-quality educational provision delivered through the immensely capable and effective hands of our staff.

We have spaces for up to 90 students on our main site in Claremont Road. The school is organised into eleven classes in three distinct ‘Learning Zones’ and caters for children with a range of severe and complex learning and/or medical needs.

In September 2021 we set up a new provision for up to sixteen students co-located at Copthall Secondary School (Mill Hill) – Mapledown@Copthall, for students who are able to access learning in a more formal way and who require fewer adjustments or interventions to succeed.

In September 2022 we set up a second satellite provision co-located at Whitefield Secondary school (Claremont Road) for up to sixteen students - Mapledown@Whitefield, for students with Autism or severe learning difficulties.

All students have an Educational Health Care Plan. Some of our students have profound and multiple learning difficulties, and some children have additional sensory and physical impairments. We have developed strong partnerships with families and carers and will always place the needs of students at the heart of all we do.

Mapledown provides a holistic environment for young people and their families, and we work closely with a variety of health professionals to ensure the health and therapy needs are incorporated in our students’ daily experience. We are committed to working in partnership with our parents to maximise the potential of everyone, and to prepare our students for adult life.

Our staff are creative and hardworking and the school holds numerous awards for excellence. Our last ungraded Ofsted inspection (November 2023) rated the school as ‘good’ overall, with enough evidence gathered to suggest the inspection grade might have been ‘outstanding’ if a graded inspection had been carried out.