Stephanie Smith worked in finance before her son’s autism diagnosis led her to change paths, qualifying first as a maths teacher with an aim to work as a Sendco.

She joined The Cavendish School (part of Eastern Learning Alliance) as deputy headteacher in 2021, the year the autism special school first opened, and has been its head since 2022. The school has children from Year 3 upwards and will open post-16 provision in September. It is Cambridgeshire’s first state autism special school, and the world’s first International Baccalaureate special autism school.

Smith tells Tes about a typical week in her role.

Time with the school community and outside agencies

I dedicate the majority of my time to interactions with our community - whether that’s with the children or their parents.

Sometimes parents come in for meetings, but a lot of meetings are online. Because my children have autism, too, I know what a bad day at school means for the children when they go home. So parents know I don’t judge them for advocating for their child.

I also get out and about around the school, going to see the children and chatting with them.

And I spend a lot of time meeting with groups outside the school, but these meetings are quite ad hoc.

I meet with agencies such as child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs), as well as with the local authorities, who I might not speak to for three weeks and then we’ll have four or five meetings in one go.

Internal meetings

My internal meetings are more regular. Every morning all 50 staff meet for a 15-minute briefing, which covers any relevant news or whether the school is expecting any visitors that day.

We also mention anything important that’s going on in our children’s lives. Recently we had a young person whose dog had died and they were struggling with grief. It was important for everybody to know about it so we could support them.

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I line-manage the senior leadership team, and every week I meet with each of them to discuss workload and any difficulties they’re facing. We also meet twice a week as a team to talk through strategy.

I sit in on our safeguarding meeting, one of several channels that feeds into our case system, which is an opportunity for leaders to talk about the children who are doing well and what we need to do to maintain that, and the children who are struggling, perhaps with attendance. We problem-solve together so we can put the right strategies in place.

Trust meetings take up about an hour of my week - my senior leadership team go to more of these meetings than me. I also meet regularly with our governors and handle all the paperwork that goes with that.

All-staff training

Every week we have what we call “Tuesday night training” from 3pm to 4.30pm. It’s CPD for all of our staff.

Last week we had an educational psychologist come in to talk about strategies around working memory. Other weeks we’ve covered therapeutic thinking and we’ve had our occupational therapists lead sessions on interoception - how you feel inside your body.

Every year we have the Autism Education Trust come in for training, so that any new staff have that base level of understanding as well.

Sometimes I book these external speakers, and sometimes my deputy head or business manager takes the lead.

Preparing for tribunals

I spend a lot of time dealing with tribunals. Most are about parents who desperately want their child to attend a special school and we’ve had to say “no” because we don’t have the space.

I meet with the local authority to find out about the young person. It typically involves me drilling down why we can’t take that child - usually because we are becoming overcrowded. Our school was built for 80 students. There are currently 121 on roll.

There’s also the time meeting with the solicitors, and then it’s the day in court, where I am a witness being questioned by the judge about why I can’t take the child.

Overwhelmingly, the outcome is “just squeeze one more in” because the tribunal deals with the one child. Nobody worries about that next one who’s coming that they just want you to squeeze in as well.

This month I’ve done three tribunals. But I also have months where I don’t have any. On average I do one a month.

Outreach work

Other parts of my work are around trying to help other people to understand our children, because there’s no point us getting students ready for a world that doesn’t understand what they need.

For example, we work with a local housing group. Some of their people have come here to look at what we do, and I’ve been to speak to housing officers to help them better understand the autistic children and adults in their homes.

I also host an annual autism awareness event during Autism Acceptance Month that is open to professionals, parents and other members of the education sector. We try to build awareness around how to make society more inclusive.

What would you change about your role?

I’d have a bigger budget! And therefore more staff and a better ability to have a greater impact on the number of places for children in special schools.

Stephanie Smith was talking to Ellen Peirson-Hagger

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