Kisimul School

The school is a DFE registered Independent Special school offering full-time education programmes for up to 38 weeks of the year. We are a provision for neurodivergent children and young people with severe and complex learning disabilities, from ages 8 to 19.

View Brochure

View Tour

Welcome

The school is located in Swinderby, a small village between Lincoln and Newark. Class sizes are small, reflecting the unique profile of our learners. Our children have communication and sensory regulation needs that often require a bespoke and individualised approach to learning and engagement. We use a therapeutically informed model, and consistency of approach is fundamental to our success.

Integrated therapeutic teams are part of the core support in the school. This provides personalised and dynamic support for communication, sensory regulation and formulation of behavioural strategies through co-ordinated Speech and Language, Psychology and Occupational Therapy. This therapeutically informed approach assists with the generalisation of learning skills and the acquisition of meaningful life skills and functional communication.

We offer day placements for children from a number of placing authorities, and admissions to the school follow a detailed assessment process to ensure support is targeted appropriately. Some children who attend the school access integrated placements within the group’s local children’s homes.

Our approach

Kisimul School is committed to using therapeutically informed approaches to support young people. Children generally respond well to the structured environment of the school and the routines and visual clues they are set, but each child has a personalised communication, behaviour and sensory support plan which provide consistency of approach. All programmes and care plans are formulated in conjunction with parents and professionals, using an evidence-based approach and utilising the multi-disciplinary teams’ combined expertise. Teaching teams undertake a thorough induction and access ongoing training, with regular and cyclical refreshers in place. Our training system is Certified by Bild ACT against the RRN Training Standards. Staff are also provided with additional communication, autism specific and trauma informed training to enhance their awareness of pedagogy and individual needs.

Kisimul School is nondenominational. We encourage young people to develop an awareness of, and interest in, themselves and others in the world around them.

Young people are encouraged to participate in a wide range of multicultural activities, through art, music and language. The school curriculum celebrates different festivals throughout the year, using a practical and sensory approach to learning.

Meaningful Life ethos

The school supports the Kisimul ‘Meaningful Life’ model that underpins how the group work with young people. Every young person has an individualised plan with bespoke goals that span home and school life to encourage maintenance and generalisation of skills. In addition, leaders have developed a set of school aspirations that drive their work as non-negotiables for our education:

Informed and evidence-based pedagogy, underpinned by high quality CPD.
Aspirational expectations for all learners, of all abilities, across all curriculum areas.
Authentic neurodiversity stemming from an inclusive culture.
The curriculum is connected, coherent and sequential, building skills and knowledge over time.
Functional skills (core literacy and numeracy knowledge) are both discretely taught and linked to the wider curriculum and real-life contextual experience.
Data collection is purposeful and prioritised to that which impacts on outcomes for children.
Consistent and invested staff, whose own well-being is supported and prioritised.
Therapeutic input is focussed on enabling access to education and supports the wider curriculum.
Shared outcomes and connected integration between education, therapy and children’s home for those within KG residential provision.

Children are safeguarded effectively because there is a transparent culture and understanding that it ‘could happen here’.

Facilities

We have a suite of modern, air-conditioned classrooms, with natural light in abundance and modern technology within every learning room. There is a library, sensory integration area and rooms allocate for our therapy teams to support out curriculum offer.

The site also accommodates a large sports hall, with indoor heated swimming pool, and extensive play and leisure facilities in the grounds. This enables us to incorporate elements of sensory regulation programmes more effectively as part of the weekly curriculum offer.

The main school building contains soft play areas with ball pools for relaxation and fun. We also have immersive learning rooms which we call our SMILE rooms (Sensory Multi-Interactive Learning Environment). This allows for individual and small group work focusing on interaction and exploration, and developing reciprocal communication and engagement.

The Old Vicarage is the children’s home associated with Kisimul Lower School Lincolnshire (Swinderby).

Curriculum and outcomes

We have a personalised approach to teaching our curriculum, which is a semi-formal outline based on five main areas of learning and a thematic approach, rather than subject specific.

These are:-

Communication language and literacy
Creative learning
Life skills
Physical and mental well-being
Cultural and community learning

Our young people are supported by personalising learning intentions, and our assessment systems use evidence from all aspects of the waking day. This ensures we are utilising education, therapy and care evidence as well as parent and professional feedback. We aim for a consensus on progress, as well as using standardised assessment tools and autism specific measures.

Destination Data for Lincs Schools 2023/24
Destination Data for Lincs Schools 2024/25

Activities

The school has an ethos of encouraging ongoing integration within the local community. Our staff teams ensure that each young person joins some form of community activity each week. Such activities may include using the local swimming pool, shopping visits, bus and train rides, walks, bowling and trips to the cinema. Recently this has also included residential expeditions as part of our Duke of Edinburgh accreditation.

Staff & Therapeutic Services

Staff within the school have specialist qualifications in meeting the complex needs of our young people. This knowledge is supplemented by continuing professional development in autism, SEN pedagogy and effective communication training. Positive reinforcement strategies are encouraged throughout the school, which includes recognising and responding to appropriate behaviour, minimising feedback for negative behaviour and following personalised plans for behaviour, communication and sensory regulation.

Each young person’s language and communication is assessed by the Speech and Language Therapy team, to identify a personalised communication programme that we aim to consistently apply across all settings. Visual symbols, objects of reference and photographs are widely used in a variety of contexts to promote our young peoples’ understanding and enhance their learning.

We use input from Occupational Therapy services to ensure that young people are regulated and ready to learn, and incorporate elements of programmes such as physical or vestibular input as functional components of our curriculum. Our team will also advise on functional skills, elements of access and mobility, personal care, and motor skills input.

Our psychology team support with understanding the function of behaviour and communication, and in providing input for engagement and strategies for supporting effective learning outcomes. This team co-ordinate and update support plans for our young people following multi-disciplinary meetings where there are concerns about engagement, mental well-being or behavioural issues. See more information on our Therapeutic Services here.

Safeguarding

Safeguarding and child protection is everyone’s responsibility. The school aims to ensure that:

* Appropriate action is taken in a timely manner to safeguard and promote child/young person/young people’s welfare

* All staff are aware of their statutory responsibilities with respect to safeguarding

* Staff are properly training in recognising and reporting safeguarding issues

Some children/young people have an increased risk of abuse, and additional barriers can exist for some young people with respect to recognising or disclosing it. We are committed to anti-discriminatory practice and recognise children/young people’s diverse circumstances. We ensure that all children/young people have the same protection, regardless of any barriers they may face.

Our policy and procedures also apply to extended school and off-site activities.

Regulatory

The overall quality of our education has been determined by Ofsted as “Good” (January 2023). A further safeguarding related inspection (September 2025) has resulted in all relevant Independent School Standards inspected being met.

You can read/download the full reports here:

https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/27/120740

The school has received no formal complaints in 2025/26 to date.