Former Victoria’s Cabaret Club on the A20 Ashford Road at Harrietsham to open as new SEN school with immersive room to prepare pupils for life outside the classroom

A venue which once hosted some of comedy’s most famous names will open as a special educational needs school in a few weeks’ time to help meet the growing demand for places.

The Earley Springs School is opening in September in the former Victoria’s Cabaret Club on the A20 Ashford Road at Harrietsham, where currently an army of workmen are converting it.

The project is the inspiration of Harriet Carter, who has 20 years’ experience working in education, and who will be the head teacher of the school that will eventually take 72 children with communication or interaction difficulties in six classes of 12 each.

The intention is to have three areas of learning: Explorers - where the curriculum will be mainly play-based; Discoverers - based on sensory learning; and Investigators, who will also study parts of the national curriculum.

Miss Carter said that the children would join the stream that best suits their needs, but could be in one part of the school for some of the day and another for the rest.

She said: “It’s not unknown, for example, for a child to be non-verbal, but have above average ability in maths and music. Children’s progressions are rarely linear.”

Each class will have one teacher and three assistants.

Miss Carter expects the majority of the pupils to be placed at the school by either Medway or Kent County councils, but she will also take private placements if requested.

She said: “Some parents are really struggling with the system at present. The waiting list for an ASD diagnosis that they may need to get their children into the right school can be up to three years.”

She said there would be no fixed scale of charges for private places; the fee would depend on the degree of support the child needed and how long they would spend at school.

Miss Carter, 39, has previously taught at various schools in the Leigh Academy Trust family, but was most recently engaged as a consultant at Tiger Primary School in Loose.

This is her first business venture.

She said that although she has worked as a Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO), it was not until her brother’s son, Lenny, was diagnosed at the age of two as autistic and with global developmental delay, that she fully understood the challenge faced by parents of children with communication and interaction difficulties.

She said: “It was a revelation, a real turning point in my life.

“I had been a SENCO and sat across the desk from parents and told them to trust the process. But schools have the children for at most six hours a day; the parents have to cope all the rest of the time.

“We found with Lenny that simple things like getting him to have a haircut became a real battle and everyday tasks like going to the shops really stressed him.”

That‘s why the new school - which she has designed herself - will include an immersive room. An array of projectors and sensory machines will enable the room to be turned into a supermarket, a High Street, or any other scenario, to help prepare the children for the experiences they may face in the outside world.

She said: “If the family wants to go on holiday, for example, we can get a video from inside a passenger jet which we can project to familiarise the child to the experience of flying.”

She said: “It’s learning, but with one foot outside of school into their home lives.”

Miss Carter’s nephew, Lenny, who is a pupil at the Five Acre Wood Special School in Maidstone, is non-verbal, which has led Miss Carter to embrace a new style of communication teaching called Spell to Communicate.

She aims to start six months’ training in the new American technique in September in order to introduce it to Earley Springs, but in the meantime, the school will utilise other methods of communication, such as sign language or picture exchange.

Miss Carter said: “When you teach a child to communicate - especially one who is non-speaking - you’re not just changing their life, you’re changing their family’s lives too.”

The school, which will take children aged between five and 13, will come equipped with a darkened sensory room and outdoor sensory gardens.

There will be an outside play area and a forest garden, a soft play room, and plenty of break-out space, where the children can chill before getting ready to enter the classroom.

There will also be a small animals’ petting area, and if they wish, the children will also be able to make friends with Miss Carter’s dog, Belter.

The school’s unusual name is a tribute to Miss Carter’s aunt, Jackie Earley, who herself had worked as a teacher at the Sutton-at-Hone Primary School.

Mrs Earley passed away during the Covid epidemic, but Miss Carter said: “She spent 40 years in teaching and was such an inspiration.

“She helped me plan my venture and although she will not be here to see it open, she knew before she died that I was going to name it in her honour.

And the Springs part of the name?

“That’s a tribute to Lenny,” she said, “he just loves jumping about!”

The school will open on September 4, initially providing alternative provision eduaction for up to three hours a day. That is while Miss Carter applies to the DoE to register as a full-blown SEN school, a process that can take up to six months.

To find out more about Earley Springs, visit the school’s website here or call 01622 805222.

Between 1972 and 2019, Victoria’s Cabaret Club was one of the top entertainment venues in the area.

Today, although the exterior of the old club has changed little, the interior has already been transformed beyond recognition.

It is now impossible to tell where the stage was that was once graced by stars such as Michael Barrymore and Jim Davidson.