Inside Skylight: exploring the first centre in Laidlaw Schools Trust's inclusive education model

Earlier this year, Laidlaw Schools Trust opened its first Skylight centre at Sedgefield, marking the launch of a new model for inclusive SEND provision across the Trust.

Designed to support pupils aged 3 to 14 within mainstream education, Skylight brings together specialist expertise, purposefully designed learning environments and evidence-informed practice to enable earlier intervention, reduce barriers to learning and help more children and young people thrive within their local school.

While Skylight will be developed across the Trust over time, our new film takes viewers inside the first centre at Sedgefield, offering a closer look at how this vision has been brought to life.

More than a tour of the building, the film explores the thinking behind every space. From play-based Early Years learning and immersive classrooms to sensory environments, therapy spaces and targeted intervention rooms, each area has been intentionally designed to support communication, emotional regulation, independence and access to learning.

Throughout the film, specialist experts working across education, SEND, speech and language, psychology and therapeutic support explain the purpose behind each space and the research that informed its design. Their insights highlight how carefully planned environments can help remove barriers to learning while enabling children and young people with SEND to remain connected to mainstream education.

The first Skylight centre represents an important milestone in Laidlaw Schools Trust's ambition to create a scalable model of inclusive provision that can be adapted across its family of schools. By combining specialist expertise with high-quality mainstream education, Skylight is helping to shape an approach where inclusion is not simply about where children learn, but how schools create the conditions for every child to belong, participate and succeed.

We hope this behind-the-scenes insight offers a valuable opportunity to explore the thinking behind Skylight and the principles that will continue to shape its development across the Trust.

If you would like to collaborate, share practice or learn more about the Skylight model, please get in touch, we would be delighted to connect.