Hollinwood Academy

Dec 31st, 2022

Jul 2nd, 2022

Jun 25th, 2020

Absolutely brilliant school, my son has been here for 2 years now after moving from a mainstream school. I have to say the move from mainstream to a specialised school, was one of the best decisions I have ever had to make as a parent. They are brilliant with him, he is always happy to go to school, which is completely different to when he was at the old school since he never wanted to go there. He settled in really well, they had loads of transition days to help him get used to the idea of going there, I don't think they needed to though, I think he settled as soon as he went through the door, all the staff are so friendly and helpful, if there is anything you need help with they will do their best to help in anyway they possibly can. They are brilliant with my boy, they have made him happy to be at school, the support he receives is top notch and I would recommend this school a million times over.
Nov 27th, 2020

Please note that my review is not being written based on the teaching staff or their methods, which i am sure are fine, this review is based on the whole process of admission into the school. After a long hard fight to get my autistic son into this school, his nursery teacher was told by a teacher that visited him at his nursery that they could not meet his needs and he would be better of at kingfisher school, who happily accepted him. Hollinwood academy seem to cherry pick their students, rather than tailoring the curriculum to meet a students needs, they will only accept students that are able to do the curriculum that they have, which is fine but i could have saved myself countless stressful hours had they had the courtesy to explain this to me. During the time of trying to find my son a place at Hollinwood academy, i called the school everyday for 2 weeks to speak to the headteacher or a member of admissions only to find that they were unobtainable and although i was always polite and reasonable on each call, i was never ever called back by them, despite their promises. Hollinwood had been named on my son's ehc plan and therefore i tried desperately to get in contact with them to arrange some sort of transition period for him but to no avail. The lack of communication was unprofessional and to be quite honest it was unsettling because if they couldn't care enough about returning a phone call then how could i expect them to care for my child. I gave up and gratefully accepted kingfishers offer of a place at their school and i am so glad i did, my son is unbelievably happy there and the staff are wonderful with him. In my opinion any school that says they are a school for autistic children need to realise that it is called autistic spectrum disorder, the key word being "spectrum".
Sep 28th, 2018