Welcome to Mapledown Secondary school!

Working and Learning together to Achieve our Best... Respect, Empower & Thrive

Welcome to the Mapledown School website. We hope that you find all the information you require and that our website will provide you with a good understanding of our school, and how hard staff and students work together to ensure students achieve their potential. 

We are a proud secondary school serving students aged 11–19 with Special Educational Needs (including Autism and/or profound or severe learning, health and care needs). We recognise that adopting a personalised approach is a critical key for each student’s development. We invest a significant amount of time assessing the students’ needs prior to their joining the school, so that we can ensure students are placed in the most suitable class and/or provision, either on our main site or in one of our satellite provisions. This approach is repeated throughout their time with us. Our aim is to discover the unique voice within each of our students through the education and curriculum we offer them, so that we can ensure that education is as bespoke as possible, and they are prepared for life beyond Mapledown. 

Each day our students bring their own unique energy into their school. In turn, we ensure that they receive high-quality educational provision delivered through the immensely capable and effective hands of our staff.

We have spaces for up to 90 students on our Claremont Road Campus. The school is organised into eleven classes in three distinct ‘Learning Zones’ and caters for children with a range of severe and complex learning and/or medical needs.

In September 2022 we set up a satellite provision co-located at Clarion Secondary school (Claremont Road) for up to eighteen students - Mapledown@Clarion, for students with Autism or severe learning difficulties.

Our new Queenswell Campus, located within the grounds of Queenswell School (N10 0NG) opened in September 2026 , and caters for up to 24 students who have transferred into KS3 from primary school, or KS4/5 existing students who have transferred from our main site. This provision will grow by an additional class each year from September 2027. All students attending will have complex needs, including autism, and will benefit from an environment similar to our main site, Claremont Campus, including access to sensory integration and outdoor equipment.

All students have an Educational Health Care Plan. Some of our students have profound and multiple learning difficulties, and some children have additional sensory and physical impairments. We have developed strong partnerships with families and carers and will always place the needs of students at the heart of all we do.

Mapledown provides a holistic environment for young people and their families, and we work closely with a variety of health professionals to ensure health and therapy needs are met in our students’ daily experience. We are committed to working in partnership with our parents to maximise everyone's potential, and to prepare our students for adult life.

Our staff are creative and hardworking and the school holds numerous awards for excellence. Our last ungraded Ofsted inspection (November 2023) rated the school as ‘good’ overall, with enough evidence gathered to suggest the inspection grade might have been ‘outstanding’ if a graded inspection had been carried out.