School’s SEND Information Report

The SENCO

• Coordinating all the support for children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and developing the school’s SEND Policy to make sure all children get a consistent, high quality response to meeting their needs in school.
• Ensuring that you are: – involved in supporting your child’s learning – kept informed about the support your child is getting – involved in reviewing how they are doing
• Liaising with all the other people who may be coming into school to help support your child’s learning e.g. Speech and Language Therapy, Educational Psychology etc…
• Updating the school’s SEND register (a system for ensuring all the SEND needs of pupils in this school are known) and making sure that there are excellent records of your child’s progress and needs.
• Providing specialist support for teachers and support staff in the school so they can help children with SEND in the school achieve the best progress possible.

Class teacher

• Checking on the progress of your child and identifying, planning and delivering any additional help your child may need (this could be things like targeted work, additional support) and letting the SENCO know as necessary.
• Writing School Support Plans (SSPs), and sharing and reviewing these with parents at least twice each year.
• Ensuring that all staff working with your child in school are helped to deliver the planned work/programme for your child, so they can achieve the best possible progress. This may involve the use of additional adults, outside specialist help and specially planned work and resources.
• Ensuring that the school’s SEND Policy is followed in their classroom and for all the pupils they teach with any SEND.

Headteacher

• The day to day management of all aspects of the school, this includes the support for children with SEND.
• She will give responsibility to the SENCO and class teachers but is still responsible for ensuring that your child’s needs are met.
• She must make sure that the Governing Body is kept up to date about any issues in the school relating to SEND.

SEND Governor

• Making sure that the necessary support is made for any child who attends the school who has SEND.

Quality First Teaching.

• That the class teacher has the highest possible expectations for your child and all pupils in their class.
• That all teaching is based on building on what your child already knows, can do and can understand.
• Different ways of teaching are in place so that your child is fully involved in learning in class. This may involve things like using more practical learning.
• Specific strategies (which may be suggested by the SENCO or outside staff) are in place to support your child to learn.
• Your child’s teacher will have carefully checked on your child’s progress and will have decided that your child has gap in their understanding/learning and needs some extra support to help them make the best possible progress.

Specific group work with in a smaller group of children.

• Run in the classroom or outside.
• Run by a teacher or a tmember of support staff who has had training to run these groups.

• He/ She will engage in group sessions with specific targets to help him/her to make more progress.
• A member of the support staff/teacher or outside professional (like a Speech and Language Therapist) will run these small group sessions using the teacher’s plan

Specialist groups

• Local Authority central services such as the Specialist Teachers or Community Speech Therapy

• Your child will have been identified by the class teacher/SENCO (or you will have raised your worries) as needing more specialist input instead of or in addition to quality first teaching and intervention groups.
• You will be asked to come to a meeting to discuss your child’s progress and help plan possible ways forward.
• You may be asked to give your permission for the school to refer your child to a specialist professional e.g a Speech and Language Therapist or Educational Psychologist. This will help the school and yourself understand your child’s particular needs better and be able to support them better in school.
• The specialist professional will work with your child to understand their needs and make recommendations, which may include: – Making changes to the way your child is supported in class e.g some individual support or changing some aspects of teaching to support them better – Support to set better targets which will include their specific expertise – A group run by school staff under the guidance of the outside professional e.g a social skills group – A group or individual work with outside professional
• The school may suggest that your child needs some individual support in school. They will tell you how the support will be used and what strategies will be put in place.

Specified Individual support

• Local Authority central services such as the Specialist Teachers or Community Speech Therapy

• The school (or you) can request that the Local Authority carry out a statutory assessment of your child’s needs. This is a legal process which sets out the amount of support that will be provided for your child.
• After the school have sent in the request to the Local Authority (with a lot of information about your child, including some from you), they will decide whether they think your child’s needs (as described in the paperwork provided), seem complex enough to need a statutory assessment. If this is the case they will ask you and all professionals involved with your child to write a report outlining your child’s needs. If they do not think your child needs this, they will inform the school who will continue with their own support for the child.
• After the reports have all been sent in the Local Authority will decide if your child’s needs are severe, complex and lifelong and that require the level of support appropriate for an EHC Plan. If this is the case they will write an EHC Plan.
• The EHC Plan will outline the number of hours of individual/small group support your child will receive from the school together with the LA and how the support should be used and what strategies must be put in place. It will also have long and short term outcomes for your child.
• The additional adult may be used to support your child with whole class learning, run individual programmes or run small groups including your child.

• Severe, complex and lifelong

• If you have concerns about your child’s progress you should, initially, speak to your child’s class teacher.
• If you are not happy that the concerns are being managed and that your child is still not making progress you should speak to the SENCO or Headteacher.
• If you are still not happy you can speak to the school SEND Governor.

If your child is then identified as not making progress the school will set up a meeting to discuss this with you in more detail and to:

• • listen to any concerns you may also have
  • plan any additional support your child may receive
  • discuss with you any referrals to outside professionals to support your child’s learning

• The school budget, received from Cumbria LA, includes money for supporting children with SEND.
• The Head Teacher decides on the budget for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in consultation with the school governors, on the basis of needs in the school.
• The Head Teacher and the SENCO discuss all the information they have about SEND in the school, including:
  – the children currently getting extra support
  – the children needing extra support
  – the children who have been identified as not making as much progress as would be expected
  And decide what resources/training and support is needed.
• All resources/training and support are reviewed regularly and changes made as needed.

• Directly funded by the school:

  • SERIS Worker for Nurture Groups
  • Experienced staff members providing 1:1 support

  Paid for centrally by the Local Authority but delivered in school:

  • Educational Psychology Service
  • Specialist Teachers
  • Speech and Language Therapy

  Provided and paid for by the Health Service but delivered in school:

  • School Nurse
  • Occupational Therapy
  • Physiotherapy

• The SENCO’s job is to support the class teacher in planning for children with SEND.
• The school has a training plan for all staff to improve the teaching and learning of children including those with SEND. This includes whole school training on SEND issues such as ASC and Speech and Language difficulties.
• Individual teachers and support staff attend training courses run by outside agencies that are relevant to the needs of specific children in their class.
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• Class Teachers plan lessons according to the specific needs of all groups of children in their class, and will ensure that your child’s needs are met.
• Specially trained support staff can adapt the teachers planning to support the needs of your child where necessary.
• Specific resources and strategies will be used to support your child individually and in groups.
• Planning and teaching will be adapted on a daily basis if needed to meet your child’s learning needs.

• Your child’s progress is continually monitored by his/her class teacher.
• His/her progress is reviewed formally every term and measured against year group expections
• If your child is in Year 1 and above, but is not working within year group expectations, a more sensitive assessment tool is used which shows their attainment in more detail and will also show smaller but significant steps of progress.
• If your child needs a more accurate assessment of their progress (if they are perhaps making very slow progress) this can be done using PIVATs assessments.
• At the end of each key stage (i.e. at the end of Year 2 and Year 6) all children are required to be formally assessed using Standard Assessment Tests (SATS). This is something the government requires all schools to do and are the results that are published nationally.
• Children that special provision is being made for will have an SSP which will be reviewed with your involvement, at least twice a year and the plan for the next SSP made.
• The progress of children with an EHC Plan is formally reviewed at an Annual Review with all adults involved with the child’s education.
• The SENCO will also check that your child is making good progress within any individual work and in any group that they take part in.
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• The class teacher is regularly available to discuss your child’s progress or any concerns you may have and to share information about what is working well at home and school so similar strategies can be used.
• The SENCO is available to meet with you to discuss your child’s progress or any concerns/worries you may have.
• All information from outside professionals will be discussed with you with the person involved directly, or where this is not possible, in a report.
• SSP’s will be regularly reviewed with your involvement.
• Homework will be adjusted as needed to your child’s individual needs.
• A home/school contact book or Showbie group may be used to support communication with you, when this has been agreed to be useful for you and your child.

Support For Parents

• The Nursery building is accessible to children with physical disability. The KS1 building is accessible to those with physical disabilities via ramps however the KS2 building has classrooms on two levels.
• We ensure that equipment used is accessible to all children regardless of their needs.
• After school and Breakfast Club provision is accessible to all children including those with SEND.
• Extra curricular activities are accessible for children with SEND.

We recognise that transitions can be difficult for a child with SEND and take steps to ensure that any transition is a smooth as possible.

• • If your child is moving child to another school:
    – We will contact the school SENCO and ensure he/she knows about any special arrangements or support that need to be made for your child.
    – We will make sure that all records about your child are passed on as soon as possible.
  • When moving classes in school:
    – Information will be passed on to the new class teacher IN ADVANCE and in most cases, a planning meeting will take place with the new teacher. All SSPs will be shared with the new teacher.
  • In Year 6:
    – The SENCO will meet with the SENCO of the appropriate secondary school to discuss the specific needs of your child.
    – Your child will do focused learning about aspects of transition to support their understanding of the changes ahead.
    – If appropriate, transition groups can be set up with children from other schools in order to familiarise your child further with children they are likely to work with at the secondary school.
    – Where possible your child will visit their new school on several occasions and in some cases staff from the new school will visit your child in this school.