As an independent specialist provision for 7 to 18 year olds with on-going Social, Emotional and Mental health difficulties, our team works hard to provide high quality personalised education experiences. We combine high expectations for our students with sensitivity to their individual needs.

We pride ourselves on providing a warm and nurturing environment, where young people can excel and become successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens. Our school staff form part of an effective multidisciplinary team that aims to equip students with the requisite knowledge and skills necessary to meet life’s increasingly difficult challenges.

We have two school sites, our main school site in Paignton and our vocational centre in Buckfastleigh: Project Compass.

We offer a wide range of activities that enrich spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of our students. We extend learning beyond the classroom to build essential independent skills, foster teamwork and to promote community collaboration through charity work, work experience and school trips.

At our Paignton site we have most of our academic and therapeutic spaces where students partake in lessons such as English, Maths, Science, RE, Geography, History, Art, Thrive, Emotional Literacy, Music and PE. We also have our own multi use games area where we have our PE lessons and play games at Break and Lunch time.

At our Buckfastleigh Site: Project Compass, we run most of our vocational opportunities. We have a woodland area which students have worked to restore by planting new saplings and remove dead wood, within our woodland we have a forest school with a central fire pit and tree houses, we are in the process of creating a peace garden with a pond and pizza oven and over the course of the last year our students have put up a polytunnel so that we can grow our own fruit and vegetables. We also have a kitchen where we do our catering lessons, a D&T workshops, an ICT suite and the POD a breakout space.

At Devon School lots of our students really like our school animals; at Project Compass we have two chinchillas called Winston and Ava and we have a gecko called Wayne.

We also have a school dog; Daisy at our Paignton site.