Sendscope Independent School - 

Our fourth project involved working with a fantastic school in South Liverpool specialising in helping children affected by SEND and neurodiversity. This took place across six sessions in September and October 2024 and was facilitated by Louis from North and South Education CIC. Sendscope works with students who are struggling in mainstream education and are at risk of falling out of the system. The staff, facilities and students are fantastic, and it was a real honour to work with such positive people. The school provides so much care and education to the students in a supportive student-centred way. We worked with ten young people and several staff. The staff pupil ratio is important and helps the students tremendously. The pupils spoke confidently about their experiences of education, their hopes for the future, their interests, and how they feel about Sendscope. The students helped with script writing, interviewed each other and the staff, and have picked up good technical skills and confidence across the sessions. The progress we have seen on the mic over the course has been very encouraging and shows the natural ability of the young people and their willingness to learn.

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We wanted to focus primarily on education and in our fourth session we invited in a relative of one of the students, who has an MBE for services to the NHS, to come in and be interviewed about their experiences of education as a young person and to look at how things have changed in the decades since. Again, the youngsters were amazing and really thought on their feet. We looked at how things have changed over the years and the students were quite shocked by some aspects of the ‘good old days’! It was also clear how much they loved coming to Sendscope.

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We have also engaged in active citizenship by talking to students about their lived experiences: speaking about issues such as social media, school and education, and friendship groups.

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We have produced three podcasts as part of this course and issued certificates during the celebration to all participants highlighting achievements and skills. The podcasts will be shared with participants, put on the websites of North and South CIC and Sendscope, and will be passed on to the National Lottery funders. We did questionnaires and a review at the end.

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80% of the students who responded to the questionnaire gave a score of seven or above out of ten for how effectively they had learned about podcast production. Students also mentioned that they had learned about equipment, about education in the past, and had developed oral and communication skills. Many students with issues around neurodiversity can get anxious when it comes to social skills. Several mentioned how their confidence had developed as a result and how their ability to talk in front of others improved. When asked about whether students would recommend the course to others several mentioned that it was fun and inspirational and helped them to come out of their shells. Three said they were interested in developing their own podcasts. There were no suggestions for improvement.

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All students agreed that they were confident talking about their neurodiversity and that people needed to know more about this issue. The students seemed to really enjoy the project.