At Leigh Academy Strood, we are committed to providing a high-quality, equitable education for every child in our community. We operate on the core belief that students have learning differences rather than learning difficulties.
Our mission is to foster an environment where barriers to learning are identified and removed, ensuring that every student is equally valued. Through an inclusive curriculum and evidence-based teaching strategies, we empower all students to access their education with confidence and success.
Our Commitment to Support
The Special Educational Needs Team works collaboratively to implement the guidance of the SEN Code of Practice (2014) and the Children and Families Act (2014). Our approach ensures that every student learns in a fully inclusive environment, supported by a dedicated team of specialists.
Detailed information regarding our provision can be found in our SEN Information Report and the Local Authority’s Local Offer.
- KS3 SENCo: Miss Chantay White
- KS4 SENCo: Mrs Kerrie Ward
- KS5 SENCo: Jo Pearce
To view our SEND, Accessibility and Equality Policies, please visit our Policies page.
Meet the SEND Leadership Team
Our team is structured to provide age-appropriate, specialised support across all key stages:
- Vice Principal Inclusion (SENCo)
Miss Julie Lindsay - KS3 SENCo
Miss Chantay White - KS4 SENCo / Senior SENCo
Mrs Kerrie Ward - KS5 SENCo
Jo Pearce
Questions about your child’s progress?
Parents can contact SENCo or college teams. Our SENCo can be contacted via email send@strood.latrust.org.uk.
Key websites for support and information
Emotion Coaching for Parents
While Emotion Coaching is widely recognised in primary and early years education, it is also a powerful tool for supporting secondary school students. By using these techniques, we can help our young people become more emotionally intelligent, resilient, and academically successful.
Emotion coaching helps families build stronger bonds, improve behavior, and develop emotionally mature young adults. Below is a guide to the four key steps you can use at home:
1. Normalise and Recognise Emotions
The first step is building self-awareness. Pay attention to your own feelings,recognise when you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or positive and notice how these moods affect your behaviour.
Action: Apply this same observation to your child. Look for shifts in their facial expressions, posture, or tone of voice to identify their emotional state before a conflict arises.
2. Listen and Validate
Respect your child’s emotions without being dismissive or controlling. Moments of intense emotion are actually “teachable moments” rather than just behavioral issues.
Action: Encourage them to talk about how they feel and share your own experiences. By intervening and talking before a situation escalates into misbehaviour, you provide them with a healthy outlet for their frustration.
3. Name the Feeling
Many teenagers struggle to bridge the gap between their internal feelings and their external actions. Helping them name their emotions can actually have a soothing effect on the nervous system.
Action: Build their “emotional vocabulary” by naming your own feelings and encouraging them to do the same. This makes it much easier to discuss complex emotions in the future.
4. Collaborative Problem Solving
It is important to separate the emotion from the behaviour. While all emotions are acceptable, all behaviours are not.
Action: If discipline is required, be clear that you are addressing their actions, not their feelings. Work together to find better ways to release emotional energy, such as through physical exercise, creative arts, or quiet reflection. Always make a point of rewarding positive emotional regulation.
It is often difficult for parents to find the “right time” to talk, especially during the teenage years. Here are five effective conversation starters designed to help parents listen and identify feelings without making their child feel pressured.
Top 5 Conversation Starters for Emotion Coaching
- “I’ve noticed you’ve seemed a bit [quiet/tense/rushed] lately. I get like that when I’m stressed—is there anything weighing on your mind?”
- Why it works: It uses Step 1 (Normalising) to show that you experience these feelings too, making it safer for them to open up.
- “If your mood today was a weather report, what would it be right now?”
- Why it works: For students who find direct “feeling words” difficult, using a metaphor like weather (stormy, cloudy, sunny) helps build that emotional vocabulary (Step 3).
- “It sounds like you’ve had a really long day. Before we talk about homework or plans, do you just need five minutes to vent, or do you want help solving a problem?”
- Why it works: This respects their boundaries (Step 2) and gives them control over the conversation, reducing the chance of defensive behavior.
- “I can see you’re really frustrated right now, and that’s okay. I’d feel the same way if that happened to me. What does that frustration feel like in your body?”
- Why it works: This validates the emotion and helps them connect their internal physical sensations (tight chest, clenched fists) to a nameable emotion.
- “I noticed how you handled [Situation X] earlier without getting angry. I’m really impressed by how you managed that feeling—how did you do it?”
Why it works: This reinforces Step 4 (Problem Solving) by rewarding good emotional regulation and encouraging them to reflect on their own success.
Welcome to The Endeavour Centre
The Endeavour Centre is an Specialist Resource Provision, based at Leigh Academy Strood, for students with an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) and a diagnosis of Autism.
We aspire to create a highly structured and predictable educational environment, which offers a balance between educational and emotional needs, and follows an individual holistic approach, with the advantage that all of our students access mainstream classes.
Our intuitive staff work collaboratively with students’ parents/carers and external professionals to ensure that our students make sustained progress and develop a resilience to enable them to become independent young people.
The Head of our Specialist Resource Provision (SRP) is Mrs Kerrie Ward. With a deep-rooted commitment to inclusive education our dedicated team is committed to creating a tailored learning environment. Their focus is on ensuring every student in the SRP receives the specialised support they need to thrive both academically and socially within our wider school community.
Contact the Inclusion Team
We understand that navigating your child’s educational journey can raise many questions. Whether you are looking for specific advice regarding a diagnosis or simply want to discuss how we can better support your child’s learning differences, our team is here to help.
To ensure your query reaches the right person, please contact the relevant SENCo for your child’s year group:
General Inclusion Inquiries
For strategic oversight or whole-school inclusion matters, please contact:
- Miss Julie Lindsay (VP of Inclusion / SENCo)
- Email: send@strood.latrust.org.uk
Year-Group Specific Support
|
Student Level |
Contact Name |
Email Address |
|
Key Stage 3 (Years 7, 8 & 9) |
Miss Chantay White |
chantay.white@strood.latrust.org.uk |
|
Key Stage 4 (Years 10 & 11) |
Mrs Kerrie Ward |
kerrie.ward@strood.latrust.org.uk |
|
Key Stage 5 (Sixth Form) |
Jo Pearce |
jo.pearce@strood.latrust.org.uk |
Note for Parents: We aim to respond to all inquiries within two working days during term time. When emailing, please include your child’s full name and year group in the subject line to help us assist you more efficiently.
Inclusion and mental health support
ELSA
Mrs Ellis is our dedicated ELSA Lead and Deputy SENCO, overseeing a vital layer of our school community. Our ELSAs (Emotional Literacy Support Assistants) are specially trained staff members who provide a nurturing environment for students needing extra emotional guidance. By offering consistent one-to-one support, they help students navigate a variety of personal challenges, including anxiety, experiences of loss, bereavement, and periods of low mood.
Through these personalised sessions, students are encouraged to better understand their own feelings, which in turn helps them build the resilience necessary to manage life’s ups and downs. Rather than simply providing answers, our ELSAs empower children to develop their own problem-solving skills so they can find sustainable solutions to their worries.
Each student typically meets with their ELSA weekly over a six-week period to ensure steady progress and meaningful connection. These sessions are designed to be engaging and varied, incorporating a thoughtful mixture of therapeutic games, creative written tasks, and open talking activities tailored to the individual needs of the child.
The Power of a School Dog:
A School Dog, specifically trained as a Dog Mentor, is more than just a pet. They are a highly valuable resource, carefully integrated into the school’s pastoral and learning environment to support students’ emotional wellbeing, academic engagement, and social development.
Why a Dog Mentor?
The evidence shows a significant positive impact across the school community:
- Boosted Mental Wellbeing: The simple act of stroking a dog lowers the stress hormone cortisol and increases the ‘feel-good’ hormone oxytocin, helping to reduce anxiety, stress, and regulate emotions in both pupils and staff.
- Improved Behaviour & Attendance: The dog offers a calming, non-judgemental presence. Time with the dog can be used as a positive reward, helping to motivate students, improve focus, and even encourage better school attendance.
- Academic Confidence: Dogs provide a safe, non-critical audience for reluctant readers (often called “Read to a Dog” sessions), increasing confidence, reading levels, and a desire to read and write.
- Social & Emotional Learning (SEL): Caring for the dog teaches invaluable lessons in responsibility, empathy, compassion, and respect for living things.
- Cognitive Benefits: It has been empirically proven that therapy dogs stimulate memory and problem-solving skills.
- Physical Benefits: Interaction with therapy dogs has been shown to reduce blood pressure, provide physical stimulation and assist with pain management.
- Targeted Pastoral Care: They are a powerful tool for one-to-one sessions, supporting pupils through issues like bereavement, anger management, trauma, or difficulty in socialising.
Introducing Brave:
We are delighted to introduce Brave, our miniature Dachshund, who joined our academy on Thursday, 4th September 2025. Brave is part of The Dog Mentor Programme, which uses the powerful human-animal bond to provide children with positive experiences that support their educational, emotional, social, and developmental growth.
Over the last eight years, The Dog Mentor Programme has been shown to make a real difference for pupils, with improvements in self-esteem, behaviour, peer relationships, and engagement skills — all of which contribute to stronger academic outcomes.
Brave has now settled into school life and will shortly begin working with pupils. We are very excited about the positive influence she will bring to our school community and look forward to seeing the impact of the programme.
