Welcome to the Freemantles School website
Thank you for visiting our school website. We hope that, for whatever reason you are here, you find it easy to navigate to the information that you require.
We are exceptionally proud of Freemantles and all of the work that it does. We received a short OFSTED inspection in November 2021, which upheld our Outstanding Grade but recommended a longer OFSTED inspection soon.
We are currently a Surrey County Council school for children and young people with complex social communication needs, usually including a diagnosis of Autism, and have developed a renowned understanding and specialism in this area.
The school supports children from 4-19 years old and has a wide catchment area which covers most of Surrey, but mainly the West. The school opened on its current Mayford site in 2007 designed to be able to accommodate a single cohort of pupils in each year group. (A maximum of 9 pupils per class)
Since 2017 Freemantles has been expanding, and from Sept 2023 we will have 2 cohorts or classes in all year groups between year R and year 9, with a total number of 225 pupils on roll. The governing body and the leadership team at Freemantles have worked with Surrey County Council to ensure that we become two form entry across the whole school. To achieve this aim, we are currently in the process of having a secondary school building added on the same site. Work has been underway since September 2022 and the first phase (building completion) is aiming to be completed in Autumn 2023. Phase two, to remove the demountable classrooms and to set up the new fields and playgrounds, where the demountable classrooms are currently situated, is due to be completed and ready for full use by September 2024.
We are really excited about this project and the new building has some wonderful facilities that will enable us to further enhance our incredible offer for our Secondary and FE pupils.
We also have plans to enhance the offer and facilities in the Primary School when we have the full building available to us.
A major priority throughout the expansion work is to ensure that we are able to offer the same excellent quality of education for all of the pupils at all times. Therefore, ensuring that we maintain and continue to improve our standards is crucial and highlighted as a key part of our Freemantles Development Plan. There is a requirement that there is sufficient outdoor space and space for emotional well-being, consistent with our School Mission, for all pupils and staff.
As we continue to expand, we also want to focus on ensuring that parents and families are well supported and have opportunities to build close relationships with school staff. Our leadership team is therefore structured with an Executive Headteacher, who has oversight of both schools and the strategic development of Freemantles, with Heads of School for the Primary and Secondary and FE schools. This ensures that all parents have confidence that senior leaders in their child’s school know their child well, can build strong? relationships with the child and parents, as well as really discussing their needs.
The Governors and Leadership team at Freemantles have always expressed a commitment to supporting all pupils with Autism in Surrey. As a result, we have a very well established and highly reputed community support role which includes outreach, training and High COIN Centre Support.
The effectiveness of the Autism Outreach offer over the last 10 years, coordinated by Freemantles, has led to Surrey investing more to expand this offer. They have changed to model to commission the Surrey Autism Outreach for Schools from Freemantles School, who will have the role of leading the new service, quality assuring and reporting back on its success. Referrals into the Outreach service need to come from schools. The service will also be running a new, more intensive programme of support for situations where this is needed called Supporting Inclusion for Autism (SIFA)
In addition, the Freemantles Outreach team are commissioned by Surrey to deliver
- STEPS – a package of support into Early years settings
- High COIN Centre Support – helping new centres to set up and run effectively
We offer an extensive range of training, which is appropriate for parents (both Freemantles and non Freemantles) and professionals. This develops a deeper understanding of the challenges of living with Autism in a ‘neurotypical’ world and how we all have a role to play in helping our children to make progress in all areas of their personal and academic growth.
Freemantles is working in Partnership with the Bourne Education Trust to support them to deliver the new High COIN Free school, Hopescourt, which Surrey has identified the need for. This is currently due to open in their new building in September 2024.
I hope that you found this introduction to our school community informative. Further detail about the key aspects of our work can be found by following the links in the text above. Please get in touch if you have anything that you would like to feedback to us about the website, we really value your views and opinions.
Justin Price
Executive Headteacher
