Part of our work as a federation, is to give our children experiences that they may have missed whilst in a mainstream setting due to their anxieties and behaviours, to give them the same opportunities to explore, question and learn...but this requires us to think outside of the box.

On Friday, we closed early in the afternoon (after ensuring that all our community was happy to do so and ensuring that everyone had lunch) to give our pupils, their families and our team, an opportunity to explore the atmosphere of the build up to HRH The Queen's funeral. An event of such exception it would be remiss of us not to pay witness to this historic period in our collective history.

During the afternoon some of our team worked with pupils on interventions in school - having the space to revisit key skills that have alluded them ; some of our pupils and their families met staff at key landmarks so that they had a familiar face to help guide them. Throughout the week, our community (and wider as we used our social media platforms to help), had received full briefing notes and guidance so that they could get to the key areas without stress ; some of our team took time to train teaching staff from other schools in behavioural management as schools had contacted for support and some, as shown here, supported our pupils to expand their GCSE Art portfolio using one of the most unique events in our history, to do so.

We haven't published all their images here, as they will be used to create a body of work based on flowers and floral creation, but from all who made the journey - which for some of our families - going into Central London in less unusual times would be stressful, the feedback has been extraordinary.

They truly appreciated the opportunity to visit the floral tributes knowing that our team were on hand to support, or visit key landmarks around the city which would play such a central part in the funeral, but have done in our history.

As a federation, we would like to thank our Governing Board for their support for this piece of work and our school community as a whole, who showed such commitment to ensuring that our pupils were able to access, explore and understand this nationally and internationally significant moment in our history.