Special Educational Needs

Graduated Intervention

1. Universal Provision aims to address a child’s needs in the classroom with the class teacher
2. Targeted Provision is bespoke support for an identified need e.g. difficulties with times tables
3. Personalised Provision is support often provided from external specialists and is to support individual need e.g. Sensory Support Services, Speech and Language therapy

Support

Support aims to  remove barriers for a child in order that they may then thrive on an individual basis.  Support may include;

• Adaptations to a child's work
• Provide learning resources e.g. word banks, laptops
• Planning for the physical learning environment
• Developing trusting relationships
• Highly trained teaching and support staff

Adult Deployment

Deployment of adults is carefully planned to meet the needs of cohorts and individuals, such as:

• Additional teaching assistant hours for an individual or class
• One to one or group support within lessons
• One to one or group support for bespoke activities
• Use of external professionals to meet a specific need for the child, support parents or enhance the school’s training

Parental Engagement

The progress of a child is directly linked to the engagement and aspirations of parents and carers.  This is reinforced by the valuable partnership between home and school. The school aims to:

• Keep parents/carers fully informed of their child’s progress
• Ensure that all parents are supporting their children’s educational development, where appropriate support and challenge is put in place to support families
• Help parents support their children e.g. workshops and clarity of information to support parents in understanding the curriculum requirements
• Involve parents fully in wider school life e.g. parent helpers, invitations to curriculum and social events, weekly achievement assemblies and using their expertise to support theme weeks/days
• Actively seeking parental views and feedback about their child’s education and well being via Termly Parent Forum Meetings, where the parents set 3 objectives they would like the school to work on and an annual questionnaire.

External Services

When the expertise of external services is required to support the school and/or child/family we will do so in partnership with  the parents of the child involved.  Access to some services can occasionally be challenging but the school via our Inclusion Leader will do all we can to get the right level of support as required.  Services that may work alongside us include:

Young Offenders, Learning Support Service (LSS), Behaviour Support Service (BSS), Educational Psychology,  Occupational Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy, Inclusion team, Portage (transitions), Parenting Team, HYMs (Healthy Young Minds), Mosaic (Children  and Adults), Team Around the School, Social Care, Virtual Head for Looked after Children, School Nurse, Sensory Impairment Team, Jigsaw, Kite, Ethnic Diversity Service (EDS), Physiotherapy, Extended Illness and Educational Welfare Officer (EWO).

Transition

Transition between settings, Key Stages and Year groups can be unsettling for many children but particularly those with additional needs.  The school prepares the child and families for any changes in the following ways:

• First Steps is our programme of support for new Reception starters this includes visits to see the child in their pre school setting, parents and children visit St John’s over a period of 6 weeks prior to starting and a series of parental meetings to ensure parents have the correct knowledge before their child starts
• SEND Meetings are held three times a year between the Inclusion leader, parents, child and any agencies involved
• Class Transitions; children meet their new teacher, spend time in their new class and teachers liaise regarding specific needs of children and families
• Parental Meetings e.g. Meet the teacher to equip parents with a working knowledge of the expectations of a year group
• High School Liaison; between staff, an induction day and additional visits for those children with particular anxiety or additional needs
• End of year reports identify next steps and key strengths as a child moves classes

Measuring the Impact of the Support

Assessment is an ongoing process for all children which aims to gather information about what a child has learnt, is yet to learn and whether they can apply the necessary skills required.  Assessments will be of both an informal and more formal nature.  Our teachers and leadership use the information to inform teaching and support for all individuals.  Progress judgements at St John’s take account of much more than simply raw data, we use evidence from the books, developments in attitudes to learning, contributions made in lessons, feedback from parents as well as performance in more formal assessments.  We measure impact specifically by:

• Teacher’s assessment against Age Related Expectations or other more appropriate assessment criteria
• At SEND Review meetings and Parent Teacher Consultations progress of individuals is discussed and further planned for
• Standardised tests are used termly to judge an individuals performance against their peers
• Termly progress meetings focus on the achievements and areas to develop for individual and groups of children
• Interventions carried out have their impact measured or evaluated using start and end data, this may be numerical data or simply anecdotal dependant upon the type of intervention
• Children from more vulnerable groups have their progress tracked either individually or as a group to ascertain whether they are performing as well as the rest of the cohort or closing the gap on their peers
• The success of some interventions is evaluated against cost and impact to ensure school delivers the most cost effective interventions that are supported by national research
• Parent Teacher Consultations and Parent Forums are used to ascertain the parental perspective of impact