Wren Spinney backstage at the Pearson Teaching Awards Ceremony 2011 with Beverley Knight 

Wren Spinney on BBC Look East 

 

Henry Winkler Award for Special Needs

A town centre sweet shop, created by a school to give ‘real life’ work experience to disabled students, is winner of the Henry Winkler Teaching Award for Special Needs including a £10,000 cash prize.

Wren Spinney is an outstanding special school with 54 students aged 11 to 19 with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties. A high proportion of students are autistic, most have communication difficulties and some have complex learning difficulties and medical needs. 

The Shop which opened in 2009, provides students with access to work placements and vocational qualifications while being integrated into the community as part of everyday life. It now stocks 250 different kinds of sweets, including some that are hand-made locally. Old-fashioned sweet jars, party bags, bird seed, fruit, vegetables and craft items are also for sale. The students are the shop keepers, responsible among other things for accurate weighing, stock taking, banking money, staff rotas and dealing with the public. 

‘It was a delight to be in an old fashioned sweet shop with a modern twist,’ said the UK judges. ‘Behind the counter and clad in white overalls, the students of Wren Spinney were smiling and ready to serve. The professionalism and dedication we saw all around us makes this a most worthy winner.’

On hearing about the winning school Henry Winkler OBE said: ‘ This brilliant idea simply delights me; giving work experience to young people and involving everyone. The people of Kettering have to be so proud of The Shop and The Workshop which can now flourish.

The Award means Wren Spinney can fund and equip a separate workshop space for students whose complex needs currently prevent them from working in public. A repertoire of skills such as assembling, packing and making leaflets will be taught; qualifications in subjects such as food hygiene are already part of the project.

Working with a consortium of eight other special schools and with local mainstream schools, Wren Spinney plans to involve as many young people as possible. Students are paid for certain tasks at The Shop and as well as being excellent ambassadors for their school, they present a positive image of what people with learning difficulties can achieve.

One mother told judges her son had blossomed by working in The Shop. ‘He now has a voice,’ she said.  Another, whose daughter comes one day a week from another school said, ‘We saw her strengths as talking and selling from a wheelchair. She now has her Hygiene Certificate and that has brought her on too.’