Rose Hill School Tunbridge Wells - SEN specialism?

[YuliaB]

I'd be grateful to hear people's views on Rose Hill School in Tunbridge Wells. I know there are a couple of threads on here, but it would be good to hear something more up to date.
We will be moving to Tunbridge Wells next year and our child would be going into Year 3. We have had a look around the school, although at the time our main focus was on pre-prep. We wanted to love it, as the grounds are amazing and it would be perfect for us geographically, but we just couldn't shake an odd feeling about it.

I'm now worried having seen the stats on the government's Get Information about Schools page. Based on their latest return, it looks like 25% of the children have some sort of SEN (59 out of 223 pupils). I could be completely wrong, but this seems like a large number to me for a mainstream independent school?

We aren't pushy parents by any means (honestly!) but do want a little academic stretch to help our child meet their own potential so I'm wondering if any current parents can give me an insight as to how they find the day to day teaching at the school. Do they cater to every child fully? Also, as far as we know at this point, our child doesn't have any additional needs, but I'm wondering if these stats show that perhaps the school is really great at identifying additional support needs?

One of the threads I came across on here mentioned that the school had made a lot of their support staff redundant - given the high number of children with additional needs, has this caused issues in the classrooms?

Alternatively, have I missed something given our lack of local knowledge, and is Rose Hill actually known locally as a school focused on supporting children with additional educational needs? TIA for any help from current parents.

I’m a current Rose Hill parent and I definitely wouldn’t say it’s known locally as a SEN school or for having a SEN specialism at all.

I was curious about the figure you mentioned so I looked at the same government site for a couple of other local preps. Rose Hill is around 26%, but Hilden Grange (in Tonbridge) is actually higher at about 35% and Holmewood House (Langton green) is around 15%. Hilden Grange is also selective, so I don’t think the SEN percentage necessarily tells you very much about how academic a school is.

SEN is such a broad category too. It can include things like fairly mild dyslexia, ADHD or speech and language needs, as well as children needing much more support. My impression is that Rose Hill is quite good at picking things up and putting support in where it’s needed, rather than that the school is particularly geared towards SEN. I've not noticed many SEN kids in my children's classes anyway, but I'm sure there are some.

Rose Hill probably isn’t a very pushy, hothouse-style prep, but I wouldn’t say it lacks academic stretch either. There are children working at very different levels and they do differentiate. They stream some classes and I know they also offer additional classes to stretch or support. It’s also quite a “whole child” school, so sport, music, drama, art etc. are a big part of it as well as academics.

On the redundancies, I know there were some staffing changes that parents were aware of, but from what I see day to day, it doesn’t feel as though support has been radically stripped back. There are still TAs in and around the classes, and they’ve also recruited quite a few new staff in other areas, like a librarian and marketing. If I'd say anything it's that they don't normally make a fuss of taking on or letting go of staff and communication around staff changes, could be generally better. That said, I've noticed they have improved on this recently with letters they are sending out, so I think they've taken on board that criticism. Previously I mainly heard about new staff through the kids mentioning a name in passing I hadn't heard before.

But, if you came away with an odd feeling after a viewing I’d definitely go back and have another look, especially at the Prep school, as that’s the part of the school you’d actually be joining. And I would ask them outright how they stretch the more able children if that's what you're mainly interested in. We've been very happy with the school and it's been great for our kids. We want them pushed academically, but happy, with an "all round" education, and all the children get on so well together. For us its been a really happy school.