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:
At St. Michael’s we identify children with SEN through ongoing and rigorous assessment and quality first teaching. The use of early intervention under quality first teaching will be used before placing a child on the SEN register. We use a number of different techniques to identify the gaps such as the EYFS profile, KS1 and KS2 SATs, quality first teaching, ongoing feedback and discussions with children, parents and carers, other professionals and many more. The use of intervention and additional support will be used to narrow the gap before placing a child on the SEN register.
If it seems that your child may have special educational needs, your child’s class teacher or the Special Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) will assess:
- What your child is good at and what they need help with
- What your child would benefit from learning
- How best to help your child learn
At this point a child may be given a short note and parents and teachers will discuss concerns and children will be closely monitored and receive intervention for a time. This is reviewed promptly and a decision is made to either place the child on the special educational needs register or that the intervention received has been successful and child can be taken off the short note. After this children thought to have special educational needs will be placed on the school’s special educational needs register and receive support:
- SEN Support Plan
- EHCP
The level of support received may change throughout their time at school. School staff will speak to you if they think this should happen and will ask you for your opinion about this.
What is a SEN Support Plan?
A SEN Support Plan says what the school, the class teacher and the SENCO plan to do to help your child learn. All teachers should be aware that children learn in different ways. Some need to work at a slower pace to ensure they fully understand one thing before they move onto something new.
A SEN Support Plan will be written in collaboration with the child, parent and teacher and will be child centric. It should:
- Include short term targets for your child which are linked to their needs
- Detail any extra support your child will get
- Identify who will give your child help
- Say how often your child will get help
- State how and when the school will look at your child’s progress again (usually at least three times a year)
- Involve the child
It is good practice for schools to share copies of a SEN Support Plan with parents / carers.
St. Michael’s assess the effectiveness of the provision by:
- Talking to the child
- Talking to the parent
- Talking to the teacher
- Monitoring the child’s progress
- Measuring improvement against objectives in SEN Support Plan
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:
In line with the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice, the school uses a graduated approach to the identification and assessment of special educational need. This is a continuous systematic cycle of planning, intervention and review within the school to enable pupils with SEND to learn and progress. Parents are consulted and kept informed at all stages.
In deciding whether to make special education provision to support educational, social, physical or emotional needs, we:
- Work in close partnership with parents/carers, pupils
- Consult with relevant external agencies
- Use assessment tools & materials
- Use observations and work scrutiny
- Use Short Notes and early interventions
- Observe, identify, recognise, record and monitor poor academic progress, physical and sensory difficulties, delayed development, weak attention and focus skills, sensory difficulties and physical difficulties, emotional difficulties and poor independent learning skills.
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:
- Discuss any concerns with parents, carers and other teachers
- Assess and identify a child’s level of special educational needs – decide on course of action – short note/support plan
- Request assessment/advice form an outside agency if deemed necessary E.G. Speech & Language, OT, CAMHS, Educational Psychology
- Plan the provision (Support Plan) to meet your child’s aspirations and agreed outcomes
- Put the provision in place to meet those outcomes
- Review the support and progress – set new outcomes – termly reviews
- Gather evidence and document progress and if necessary apply for top up funding if the school feel that more resources need to be put in place to meet the pupil’s needs.
- For children with significant and complex needs, a request will be made to DCC SEND Provision for an EHCP (Education Health Care Plan) assessment
At St. Michael’s C of E assessment is carried out by staff who work together to moderate children’s work. This moderation is supported by other schools and 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 diminish the difference and to achieve age related expectations.
Children/young people may join the school 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 and 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 (or just following) this meeting a Short Note would be completed with agreed outcomes for the child/young person and next steps. The plan would be actioned, assessed and reviewed. Depending on how the outcomes have been achieved, the plan may cease, or may continue to the next round of Plan, Do, Review or if there is still significant concern, next steps may require the involvement of specialist support or advice for example, Educational Psychology, SENDIASS (Parents Advice and Support Service), Cognition and Learning Team Occupational Therapy 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’ children but to seek advice or strategies to help them to reach their full potential. As part of this approach every child with SEN 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 (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 2 EHC Plans.
For more detailed information see the Local Offer
Details of Identification and Assessment of Pupils with SEN
For further information please view or download our Accessibility Plan which can be found in the School Policies section of our website.
