I'm applying for an office job in a school for children with special needs, is there anything I should know, bear in mind

[moopdaloop]

aim for should I be lucky enough to get the job.

Of course I won't be directly working with the children, but I imagine I will be seeing a lot of parents and carers and dealing with lots of administrative stuff

any advice or thoughts or points to bear in mind you can offer would be greatly appreciated

What type of school? MLD SLD/PMLD?

DS1's SLD/PMLD school isn't very 'schooly' - it's a very warm and friendly place where its first names all round. It's a very cheerful place too. Despite having some very profoundly disabled children (e.g. children who can never sit and have to be tube fed etc).

I know less about other types of special school.

Might we worth swotting up on the SEN code of practice (or at least having a glance- it's available online).

age 5 - 17, range of SN including autism, GDD, EBD .. supposedly MLD but increasingly SLD at primary intake (from what I understand from Ofsted report a few years old)

At my ds school, the office door is open, and the children sometimes pop in the say hello as they pass by. So at the interview, if you impress them with your bright happy sociable side, that would help, because you may have more contact with the children than you think! My ds school btw is a special school for physically disabled, so all manner of mild to severe disability, but children all full of zest.

Hope you get the job!

In ds school (3-11, mld/asd/sld) the office staff are involved in small but important ways on a day to day basis with the children and are all very friendly and positive. Most of the children come by taxi/bus and parents send in notes, payments, spare cloths, via the school bags. There is much tighter security to keep children safe (from wandering off etc), and all visitors have to be let in! Summer fairs and special nights often involve all the school! The speech therapist comes twice weekly, and others such as ot/ physio and paed come and go. There are lots of trips out and about.
I mention these things because it is different to a ms school, with the children almost protected from the busyness around them in part by the admin staff.

Be friendly, be aware of safety aspects, visitors, doors locked etc, Know about child protection, ask at the interview if you can see the Schools Policies as soon as you can.

Good luck!

Office staff in ds' school have quite a lot of interaction with the children. Everyone gets involved with everything. Show you're willing to get stuck into anything and can be calm in a crisis eg. minibus full of autistic kids breaking down/classroom flooding etc etc!(Hopefully not too many of those!) Plus a basic knowledge of who everyone is speech therapists etc. Ds' school is so friendly, fun and safe that I wish all kids could go to a school like that. Hope you get the job!

Also respect the need for confidentiality - that may seem like a given, but you'd be surprised at how gossipy it can be (like any school really!), but as fio says some of the parents will be phoning in with very personal issues.

Good luck with getting the job

thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts. I haven't even sent in the application form yet and I'm getting rather excited. I would love to do this job.

if you have any more thoughts please post them, the closing date for applications is towards the end of the month so I won't even know if I have an interview until then.