Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Class/Subject Teacher

Responsible for:

• 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 Individual Education Plans (IEP), and sharing and reviewing these with parents at least once each term and planning for the next term.
• 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.

The SENCO

Responsible for:

• 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.

Headteacher

Responsible for:

• 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.

SEN Governor

Responsible for:

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

If parents and carers feel they would like some impartial information, advice or support on any issues relating to their children’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), you can contact the Cumbria SEND Information, Advice and Support Service (SENDIASS) who can offer a range of support. They will help parents, carers and young people to prepare for meetings with school or the local authority and practically support you at the meetings in an appropriate and impartial manner.  They also signpost to other relevant support networks.

For more information on SENDIASS and how to find support, please click on this link: https://www.cumbria.gov.uk/childrensservices/schoolsandlearning/ils/parentpartnership/default.asp

Class teacher input via excellent targeted classroom teaching also known as Quality First Teaching.
 

For your child this would mean:

• That the 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.

All children in school will be getting this as a part of our excellent classroom practice.

If you have concerns about your child’s progress you should speak to your child’s class teacher initially. 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 (Mrs L Kendall).

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

• listen to any concerns you may have too
• 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 getting extra support already
  – 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
• Senior TA delivering Maths Recovery support
• Senior TA delivering writing recovery Support
• Senior TAs delivering Phonic intervention groups
• School counsellor delivering SERIS support.
• Experienced teacher/ TAs providing 1:1 support
• Speech and Language Therapist

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:

• Heath visitor
• 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.
• Teachers are also supported in school by specialist agencies who may visit a child and offer advice and support to school.

•  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  if they are in the Early Years (pre-school, Nursery  to the end of Reception) against the EYFS development matters statements and if they are in Key Stage 1 ( Year 1 or 2) against National Curriculum level programmes of study and a judgement made if they are making excepted progress.
• If your child is in Year 1 and above, but is not yet at National Curriculum levels, a more sensitive assessment tool is used which shows their level in more detail and will also show smaller but significant steps of progress. The levels are called ‘P levels’.
• If your child needs a more accurate assessment of their progress and they are working between Level 1 and Level 4 (if they are perhaps making very slow progress) this can be done using PIVATs assessments in the same National Curriculum areas.
• 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 at SEN Support will have an IEP which will be reviewed with your involvement, every term and the plan for the next term 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.

• 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.
• IEP’s will be reviewed with your involvement each term.
• Homework will be adjusted as needed to your child’s individual needs.
• A home/school contact book may be used to support communication with you, when this has been agreed to be useful for you and your child.
• The Headteacher is available to meet with you to discuss your child’s progress or any concerns/worries you may have.

• Our school building is accessible to children with physical disabilities. Our school building is on one floor.
• We ensure that equipment used is accessible to all children regardless of their needs.
• After school 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 IEPs will be shared with the new teacher.
• All children will spend some time in their new class before they move up .
• In Year 2:
  – The SENCO will meet with the SENCO of the appropriate Junior/Primary 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.

You can find out more information about Cumbria’s Local Offer by clicking here.