Welcome to Sunningdale School
. Where we want every child to

Our vision for our pupils is encapsulated in the phrase, “Be More...” We want every child to ‘be more’. That is, we want every child to be more in whatever way is important to them and their family.

 

We are proud to be a serially Outstanding special school but, really, we are much more than that!

Sunningdale School is more than just a school- it is an organisation made up of several parts. This includes:

• Sunderland’s only maintained specialist school (and only specialist school for children with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties, including autism, aged 2-11);
• Sunderlands only Specialist Early Years Centre for children aged 2-5 with Severe Learning Difficulties and Complex Communication and Interaction needs;
• Sunningdale Research, Development and Training Centre (sometimes referred to as SENhub); and
• Sunningdale Charity, through which we work towards community cohesion through support and engagement for children with Severe, Profound and Complex Presentations of SEND across the City of Sunderland.

Our main School Site and the SENhub are based in Doxford Park, Sunderland. Sunningdale Early Years Centre is based in Ryhope, Sunderland.

We aim to be actively inclusive with our stakeholders which includes all of our families, the city of Sunderland, a range of national organisations and schools from all over the world. We provide a range of workshops and training sessions through our training centre, the SENhub. Several of these are aimed at supporting parents, careers and families of children with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties.

We are really proud to work closely with a range of partners locally, regionally and nationally including Together for Children, the National Children’s Bureau, Evidence for Learning, Dingley’s Promise, EQUALS, Ofsted and the Department for Education. At Sunningdale we don’t chase awards or badge’s, we prefer to allow our impact to be visible through what we do day-in- day-out with children and the influence and support that our approaches provide for the wider education sector.