Corby special school opens café for their students to work in and gain valuable work experience

A special academy in Corby has opened a café for its students to work in and gain valuable work experience.

The Red Kite Café at Red Kite Special Academy was opened on site yesterday (Wednesday, July 12). It will eventually be fully open to the public.

At the café, key stage 4 and 5 pupils will work as part of their work experience and they will also make gifts in their Enterprise lessons to sell in what will eventually be a wider ‘village’ complex of three shops.

Bonnita Pawlusek, deputy headteacher at Red Kite Academy, said: “The Red Kite Café kind of came at a brainstorming evening.

“We were developing our careers and independence curriculum and one of the things we were hoping to do is find some external placements for pupils to develop employability skills. Unfortunately that proved to be much harder than we had first anticipated.

“So we then came up with the idea that if we can’t find it externally, that we’d bring it internally to our pupils.

“The café will give students lots of rich work experience opportunities, so the pupils will be able to gain knowledge and information on food hygiene, they’ll be able to develop their social skills [through] communication and interaction with the public, and it will also be a great opportunity for them to develop their cookery abilities.

“What we’re hoping is that individuals will be able to take these skills and firstly apply them to their own lives, and have those functional skills. For some individuals it’ll be a perfect opportunity to use their skills to maybe go into a place of employment.”

The café is the first unit in what is planned to be a wider village of shops, including the café, an enterprise store and a garden centre/greenhouse.

The school ran a competition, asking students to design the logo for the café. The winning logo was designed by student Gabriella Farrant.

Special guest author Chris Bonnello was invited to cut the ribbon at the opening.

Chris is an autistic writer, novelist and special needs tutor, formerly a primary school teacher. Since 2015, he has become a national and international speaker on autism issues.

He is also the author of the Underdogs novels, a near-future war series featuring autistic and otherwise neurodiverse heroes.

Chris said: “It’s more than about just the food and drink, it’s the opportunities it provides, which Red Kite’s always been rather good at.

“Having worked in specialist education myself, I’m aware of not just the extra provisions that need to be made to accommodate students but the sheer range of needs and the sheer range of ways their needs need to be met but school does a rather good job of providing those opportunities, learning opportunities, development opportunities, work experience opportunities, so I am a fan of Red Kite.”