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Up Holland High School is the first school in Lancashire to be awarded ADHD Friendly school status

Up Holland High School in Orrell is the first school in Lancashire to be awarded the prestigious ADHD Friendly School award by the ADHD Foundation for their work with children with ADHD in the last academic year. Up Holland High School is proudly committed to supporting all children within their school, whatever their particular needs, to improve their life chances through education. 

Up Holland High School has considered all of the main barriers to learning for children with ADHD and has sought to address them in their everyday practice, from their fitness and wellbeing centre, where children with ADHD can take part in intense physical activity using a full range of equipment, to their time-out passes and regulation stations. A much-needed resource for children for whom school can be an overwhelming and stressful place at times.  

Helping children with ADHD to self-regulate was a key feature of the submission for the award with great use of tactile resources across the school. Each faculty within the school has their own collection of tactile resources in order to assist students in focussing and regulating their attentional and executive functioning skills.  

The SEN team and the PE department have also been working collaboratively to ensure that there are opportunities for physical activity at Up Holland High School every day. In addition to this, the school has done a wonderful job of celebrating neurodiversity and de-stigmatising neurodiverse conditions.  

This has been achieved through sessions with the students which have helped them to understand ADHD more as well as a whole-school display which celebrates the positives of ADHD and promotes the stories of successful people with neurodiverse conditions. Up Holland High School has also set up a parent forum to provide a stronger link between home and school in order to further support their neurodiverse students. 

Megan Dewhurst, the SENDCo from Up Holland High School said: “We are absolutely thrilled to have been award the ADHD Friendly School award! This academic year staff have been dedicated to understanding more about the condition and we are committed to doing what we can to support all of our neuro-diverse students.  

“Working with the ADHD foundation has been a fantastic way to not only improve staff understanding but has also helped shape our parent forum and we will continue to build what we already have in place for our students and their families”. 

Colin Foley, the training director of the ADHD Foundation said, “It has been a privilege to work with the Up Holland High School. The staff have gone above and beyond to make their lessons and their school environment enjoyable, supportive and safe spaces for their students with ADHD and I’m glad that they are getting the recognition for this that they deserve.” 

The ADHD Foundation, based in Liverpool, works in partnership with individuals, families, doctors, teachers and other agencies to improving emotional well-being, educational attainment, behaviour and life chances through better understanding and self-management of ADHD, ASD and related learning difficulties. 

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