Where a pupil is identified as having a special educational need school will follow a graduated approach which takes the form of cycles of “Assess, Plan, Do, Review”
- Assess a child’s special educational needs
- Plan the provision to meet your child’s aspirations and agreed outcomes
- Do put the provision in place to meet those outcomes
- Review the support and progress
A special educational need can be a number of different things. For example, a child may be having problems with communication, social, emotional, physical or sensory issues, which can be helped by putting extra support in at school and by working in partnership with parents. It may also be due to a disability which makes it harder for a child to use the same educational facilities that the school provides for the majority of children. For some children this may be a temporary difficulty, while others may have a long term need for special help.
Monitoring – School staff may initially identify a concern. Following this, the class teacher alongside the SENCo will discuss the child’s needs at a meeting with parents/carers and/or the child/young person. This would be arranged at the earliest opportunity. During this meeting a Short Note would be completed with agreed outcomes for the child/young person and next steps. The next steps may require the involvement of specialist support or advice for example, Educational Psychology, SENDIASS (Parents Advice and Support Service) or another of education health and social care professional. It is important to understand that the involvement of professionals does not always seek to label or diagnose but to seek advice and strategies to enable a child/young person to reach their full potential.
Quality first teaching – Children learn and develop in different ways. Teachers recognise this and use different teaching styles and resources. They plan different levels of work in the classroom to cater for the various ways children learn. This is called Quality First Teaching and is something schools must provide for all children.
SEN support – For some concerns, we may discuss the involvement of specialist support, for example, Education Psychology or Occupational Therapy. Once again, it is important to understand that the involvement of professionals does not always seek to ‘label’ or ‘diagnose’ children but to seek advice or strategies to help them to reach their full potential. All children on the SEND register have a SEN Support Plan. Parents are invited into school to review and discuss support and progress with staff every term. The effectiveness of the support and interventions and their impact on the pupil’s progress will be reviewed continually. The class teacher, working with the SENCO and the parent/carer, will revise the support in light of the pupil’s progress.
Education Health Care – A small percentage of children and young people with significant and/or complex needs may require an assessment that could lead to an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). The purpose of an EHCP is to make special educational provision to meet special educational needs of the child or young person, to secure the best possible outcomes for them across education (SEND Code of Practice p.142). It is a legal document that describes a child or young person’s special educational, health and social care needs. We currently have two EHC Plans. Additional top up funding may be given to schools for individual pupils who have an EHCP or SEN Support plan.
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How children with SEN engage in all activities
We do our best to ensure that all children can access all things as best as we can. We do not see SEND as a barrier to access the full curriculum and ensure that children with SEND are fully included in all activities to promote the highest levels of achievement. SEND pupils are inclusive in all clubs, school visits, residentials and after school clubs.
For example, if a child has a visual impairment, they can be incorporated into a PE lesson with adaptation and effort; we make that effort. We are prepared to seek advice, resources, equipment, and training when needed to provide quality-learning experiences for our children.
How we evaluate the effectiveness of SEN provision
We continuously ensure that SEND provision has a positive impact on the outcomes for all of our children/young people. In this respect, the Headteacher and SENCO will report termly to Governors upon the quality of education provided for and the achievements of pupils with SEN.
We will do this in a variety of ways
- classroom observations / learning walks / book scrutinies to ensure appropriate levels of differentiation
- regular tracking of SEN pupils through the whole school and SEN tracking systems
- termly meetings take place between staff and SENCO
- regular meetings take place between SENCO and Headteacher
- discussions take place between the SENCO and SEN Governor
- information is given annually to the Every Child Matters Committee (Curriculum and Standards) about the provision we offer in school
- Children with SEND have access to a broad and balanced curriculum. The class teacher, alongside the SENCo will discuss the child’s needs and what support would be appropriate. Teachers use assessments and observations of children on a regular basis to review their needs and what provision is most appropriate. Different children will require different levels of support, in order to bridge the gap to achieve age -related expectations, which could be on a one-to-one basis, within a group, support by a teacher or teaching assistant or through peer support and in or out of class. Throughout the process, we keep an on-going dialogue with parents. The impact of provision for individuals and groups will be evaluated termly.
- All children with SEN have support plans which identifies how school are providing for their needs. The SENCO monitors the provision for each child through book scrutinies, lesson observations and learning walks. Provision is reviewed against the pupil’s outcomes and the impact evaluated. Each term, the SENCO monitors support plans for the percentage of outcomes achieved and reviews priorities for the next term.
- Progress is measured through National Curriculum and EYFS grades and teacher assessment. Risk assessments are used to support children with difficulties in keeping themselves and other safe. We do this in conjunction with the Local Authority health and safety team. We endeavour to make reasonable adjustments to meet the needs of all pupils regardless of their need and/or disability.
- We currently evaluate the effectiveness of SEN across the four broad areas of SEN provision in the following ways:
- Communication and interaction
- We work closely with the Speech and Language Team to assess before and after any intervention to evaluate the impact of provision.
- Cognition and learning
- We use the assessment data provided by teaching and support staff or from Cognition and Learning Assessments to assess before and after any intervention to evaluate the impact of provision.
- Social, Emotional and Health Difficulties
- We use the THRIVE Programme assessment tool to assess before and after any intervention to evaluate the impact of provision.
- Sensory and/or Physical Difficulties
- We use the advice from the Visual Impairment and Hearing Impairment professionals to provide advice on resources and provision needed and to monitor and evaluate the impact of provision. Our Accessibility Plan can be found in the policies section (policies).
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