• New Ways School is therapeutic, relational and highly individualised, and aims to help pupils feel safe enough to make real progress.

• Will suit families seeking specialist therapeutic provision in Birmingham for a pupil who needs a more tailored and understanding secondary environment.

Admissions at New Ways School are likely to be highly individual and consultation led, with the central question being whether its therapeutic specialist model is right for a pupil with complex needs. Families are more likely to be choosing the school because mainstream has not delivered enough security or progress, and because they want a setting built around understanding behaviour rather than merely managing it.

Scholarships are not really the point here. The value lies in whether the school's specialist knowledge, therapeutic culture and smaller-scale environment can help a young person reconnect with learning.

The overall picture is reassuring for a specialist setting of this kind: the school describes a therapeutic approach for pupils with needs including ASD, ADHD and attachment-related difficulties, and Ofsted currently shows the school as Outstanding. Parents should still ask how therapy, curriculum and post-16 planning work in practice for their child.