Welcome To City of Rochester School

May I take this opportunity of extending a very warm welcome to you.

City of Rochester School provides specialist education for children and young people aged 5 to 18 with a diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC). We are incredibly proud of our unique children, our supportive parents and carers and our dedicated staff team where we all work together to make City of Rochester School a safe, happy and inspirational place to learn. 

We are a small school offering an individualised and bespoke curriculum that is built around the pupil. Our curriculum enables pupils to thrive, shaped by our principles of Confidence, Resilience and Success. Our curriculum is academic, vocational and creative delivered through a therapeutic approach. Accredited learning programmes are offered from KS3 to KS5 and range from entry level qualifications through to GCSEs and beyond. We believe that our pupils need to fully immerse themselves in their learning, and a key component of our curriculum are the “experiential” elements. Examples of this include forest school, STEM workshops, photography, animal husbandry and work experience opportunities. We work with key external partners to deliver high quality experiential elements in our curriculum.

Our pupils’ neurodiversity means that as well as having a focus on pupil academic progress we have a strong therapeutic approach to support pupils’ social development. This work is reinforced by powerful pastoral and family engagement programmes. Our wrap around therapy team, includes speech and language, play therapy, arts therapy, counselling and occupational therapy. Our specialist staff team know all our pupils, parents and carers very well and this forms the bedrock of our approach.

The ambition for all our pupils is for them to leave City of Rochester School with the foundation for further education, training or employment. It is our duty to provide the right environment to nurture our pupil’s confidence; to give them the necessary skills to be resilient and responsible citizens and to celebrate their paths to success. 

Ofsted July 2021: “This is a vibrant and active school”. “Pupils benefit from a rich range of opportunities” “Pupils are afforded patience, assistance and space to learn. Adults care deeply about pupils”.

Parent Survey March 2023: “The school supports me and my family brilliantly!” 100% of parents said they would recommend the school to other parents. “I cannot think of anything that the school could improve on. It has a fantastic team and they obviously have the children’s needs at the forefront of their minds”.

We all welcome you to City of Rochester School.

Alicja Emmett

Headteacher