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
- Other
SEN Support
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
Termly assessment is carried out by staff who work together to moderate children’s work. This moderation is supported by the Local Authority on a regular basis. The school uses a tracking system to analyse data and to identify gaps in children’s learning and to plan appropriate intervention when required. Different children require different levels of support to overcome potential barriers to their learning and to achieve age-related expectations.
Children/young people may join Etherley Lane with parents having a clear understanding of their child’s needs and as a school we see parents as partners in their child’s educational journey. In this case, we work together with parents/carers and young children/person and education, health and social care professionals to design an individualised SEN Support Plan that describes the child’s needs, outcomes & provision to meet those needs. Parents/carers and child/young person views are integral to this process.
School staff may initially identify a concern. The class teacher alongside the SENCO will discuss the child’s needs and a meeting with parents/carers and/or the child/young person 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 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.
As part of this approach, every child with SEND will have an individualised SEN Support Plan that describes the child’s needs, outcomes and provision to meet those needs. Parents/carers and child/young person views are integral to this process.
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. Currently, 32% of pupils on our Special Educational Needs register have an Education, Health and Care plan and 6.2% of all of our children in school receive additional funding to support their needs.
For more detailed information see the Local Offer
Details of Identification and Assessment of Pupils with SEND
If your child has a special educational need or disability, it may be important for us to carry out formal assessments to identify their strengths and identify their needs accurately. To do this, we will use a range of methods depending upon their needs. When your child enters our school, their current attainment is assessed to give us a ‘baseline’ from where they will progress. Depending upon their needs, other assessments may be needed. These could include:
- Speech Therapy Assessments – which may focus on sound production, language understanding, or other relevant assessments to your child’s needs
- Education Psychology Assessments – which may include memory, understanding, reasoning, logic, and general skills assessments
- Observations of pupils
- Cognition Clinic consultations
- Movement Programme baseline assessment
The outcomes of all assessments are shared with parents and carers at our termly SEND drop ins and in your child’s School Report. If other agencies are invited to work with your child, you will be invited to attend a meeting where the outcomes of these assessments and their next steps will be shared with you.
Your child’s school achievements may be assessed against the levels expected for children who are working on the National Curriculum (i.e. the same as the majority of other children in their year group), or they may be assessed against other measures for children who are not ready to work on National Curriculum Levels (i.e. the steps before the National Curriculum).
How is the decision made about what type and how much support my child will receive?
The class teacher alongside the SENCo will discuss the child’s needs and what support would be appropriate. SEND is discussed each week at staff meeting to allow staff to share concerns or ideas as to how we can help the child.
Teacher’s use assessments and observations of children to identify, review and evaluate their needs and gaps in their learning. We look at what we can provide to meet the child’s needs and we discuss and measure the effectiveness of the interventions the children have undertaken that term. Different children will require different levels of support in order to overcome barriers to achieve age expectations which could be on a one to one basis, with a group, run 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 yourselves as parents.
At Etherley Lane Primary School, we currently have children with a variety of needs in school and provide the following interventions to meet the needs of our children:
Support for children with physical needs:
- Quality First Teaching, accessing a broad and balanced curriculum
- Daily Gross Motor Skills interventions.
- Weekly Fine Motor Skills interventions.
- Specialist group support from outside agencies e.g. Occupational Health
- Access to Fundamental Movement activities
Support for children with speech, language and communication needs:
- Quality First Teaching, accessing a broad and balanced curriculum
- Individual Speech and Language interventions based on practice plans and targets set by speech therapists
- Specialist group support from outside agencies e.g. Speech and Language Therapy
- NELI
- ELKLAN approaches
- Intensive Interaction
Support for children with social, emotional and mental health difficulties:
- Quality First Teaching, accessing a broad and balanced curriculum
- Specialist group support from outside agencies e.g. CAMHs Mentoring and Counselling; Piece of Mind
- Access to individual support from the Emotional Resilience Team
- Access to Nurture Group support
- Individual ELSA support
Support for children with cognition and learning needs:
- Quality First Teaching, accessing a broad and balanced curriculum, including adaptive approaches where necessary
- Maths and English specific intervention and support, e.g. Phonics, Dynamo Maths
- Specialist group support from outside agencies e.g. Educational Psychology Service
- Specific individual support for children whose learning needs are severe, complex and lifelong and what this means for your child e.g. Dyslexia, Dyspraxia
- A broad range of extra-curricular activities, including After-School
- Visual aids and resources
How are resources made available to support children with SEND?
The resources we use to support children with SEND depend upon their needs and they are allocated on an individual basis. Once your child has been identified as having a special educational need or disability, their needs will be assessed and targets and outcomes will be identified. It is the responsibility of the SENCO to ensure that the resources that are required are made available and that staff are aware of their individual needs. We are very flexible in our approach and we constantly monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our interventions and the provision that we provide.
- As part of our staff professional development, all members of staff received training to support children with SEND:
- School-based CPD – systems and procedures, staff audit, staff planning and agreed action points.
- Intensive Interaction training
- Identifying and responding to the needs of children and young people who are anxious
- Managing behaviour of concern
- Supporting children who suffer from attachment-based trauma
- Nurture training
Staff Training will vary each year depending upon the needs of the children.
For further information please view or download our Accessibility Plan which can be found in the School Policies section of our website.
