Most children and young people in mainstream schools will have their special educational needs met through good classroom practice. This is called Quality First Teaching.
Early Identification of Need
In deciding whether to make special education provision to support educational, social, physical or emotional needs, we:
- Work in partnership with parents/carers, pupils
- Consult with relevant external agencies
- Use assessment tools & materials
- Use observations
- Use Short Notes
School staff or parents may initially identify a concern. The class teacher will meet with parents to discuss the child’s needs. During this meeting, a Short Note would be completed with agreed outcomes for the child and next steps.
Where a pupil is identified as having a special educational need we follow a graduated approach which takes the form of cycles of “Assess, Plan, Do, Review”.
This means that we will:
- 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
As part of this approach, every child with SEN will have an individualised SEN Support Plan that describes the child’s needs, outcomes & provision to meet those needs. Parents/carers and child/YP (where appropriate) views are integral to this process. The Support Plans are reviewed on a termly basis to monitor success of achieving outcomes.
We carry out on-going and termly assessment to ensure all interventions are having the desired impact. The school uses a tracking system to analyse data and to identify gaps in children’s learning and to plan appropriate intervention when required.
For some concerns, we may discuss the involvement of specialist support, for example, Education Psychology, SENDIASS (support for families) or Occupational Therapy. 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.
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.
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.
For more detailed information see the Local Offer
Details of Identification and Assessment of Pupils with SEN
We use Nessy as a tool to help identify children with specific learning difficulties. Lexia helps to identify starting points for interventions.
We track progress of all pupils to ensure children are receiving the appropriate interventions.
For further information please view or download our Accessibility Plan which can be found in the School Policies section of our website.