Helping pupils thrive with symbols in Herbert Street Special School, Cape Town

With 83 students, many from previously disadvantaged households in the northern suburbs, Herbert Street Special School plays a vital role in providing education, structure, and care for the children in its community. While supported by the government, the school relies heavily on fundraising, NGO grants, community donations, and modest school fees.

To ensure that no child goes hungry, the school also runs a government-funded feeding programme, supplying two meals each day. Many learners are non-speaking or minimally speaking, which makes communication support essential. Widgit has therefore become a cornerstone of the school’s approach, enabling learners to express themselves, build understanding, and engage more fully with their education.

At Herbert Street Special School, Widgit Symbols are embedded into almost every aspect of school life:

• In the classroom and beyond: Visuals for learning and daily routines.
• AAC support: Communication folders, choice boards, and labelling boards.
• Socio-emotional learning: Social Stories and regulation activity requests.
• Structure and independence: Daily visual schedules, activity schedules, and first/then boards.
• Literacy development: Visual components for phonics and sight words, with sentence strips added into readers for visual support when learning to read.
• Learning resources: Teacher-created worksheets and tasks tailored to student needs.

This wide range of applications gives learners access to communication and understanding tools that are consistent, reliable, and tailored to their developmental stage. Widgit’s role in the school has been transformative, not only for learners, but also for teachers and families.

“Having visuals for a task schedule helps my high support learners to stay on task during an activity, understand and follow the steps, and complete these tasks with a lower level of adult support than if there were no visuals.”

– Grade 3 teacher

“The visuals we use for sight word reading have really helped my learners to recognise words in isolation and in text. I am seeing such improvement in my class’s literacy levels!”

– Profound Intellectual Impairment teacher

“My learner is usually non-speaking. But when we introduced the AAC board with the speech therapist, suddenly he was pointing to the pictures and trying to say the words. He is starting to try and communicate with us! It is so exciting. I have been able to send some of these communication supports home for their parents.”

– Early Childhood Intervention Practitioner

“Having the pictures at home has helped us to understand our child, what he wants, and such. We can use the pictures to speak to him, and he can tell us what he wants to do.”

– Parent

Herbert Street Special School demonstrates the life-changing impact that symbols can have for autistic learners. For children who might otherwise struggle to communicate or access education, Widgit provides a bridge to understanding, learning, and connection. By equipping both classrooms and homes with consistent, accessible symbols, the school is creating an environment where every learner has a voice and the opportunity to thrive.