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:
Assess, Plan, Do, Review.
Through normal every day marking and assessment, the class teacher will be able to quickly identify if a child is finding an area of learning more challenging than their peers and intervention is quickly put in to place to help if progress does not improve after this then parents are consulted on an informal basis and a short note is written and recorded.
Children are always consulted and spoken to about their difficulties. Marking and feedback helps the children to identify any errors in their recording and hopefully they can learn from having the quality feedback provided by our teachers. Once intervention is put in place, these are monitored and the impact of these is reviewed. If the intervention is helping the child to make progress, then it will continue until a time when the child no longer needs it.
Burnhope Primary School uses OTrack as an assessment and tracking system. Teachers, SENCO and Headteacher can quickly identify any child who is not in line with age-related expectations and address this in Pupil Progress meetings with staff to ensure support is put into place promptly.
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:
Write a Support Plan in a meeting with the parent, class teacher and young person, writing specific learning outcomes which are SMART and are reviewed on a regular basis. The outcomes should be agreed with the parent and child and it is written into the Support Plan what steps, resources and support will be given to help achieve the outcome.
If after two cycles of Support Plans the child still makes little or no progress, we would look to make a referral to an outside agency to get advice and support about how best to help that child and investigate whether the child has a Special Educational Need which is preventing them to make progress in line with their peers. This is only done with full parental consent.
- 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
As part of this approach every child with SEN will have an individualised SEN Support Plan that describes the child’s needs, outcomes & provision to meet those needs. Parents/carers and child/YP (where appropriate) views are integral to the 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.
An application for an Education, health and care assessment will take place if the school feels a child has a SEN which they feel they need extra support and funding for in order to provide the necessary, appropriate education for that child. This would be if a child had needs significantly different from their peers or needs which were very complex and needed extremely specific support for.
We currently have one child in school with an EHCP who receives support in class. This child has a diagnosis of ASD.
For more detailed information see the Local Offer
Details of Identification and Assessment of Pupils with SEN
Staff use the SEN planning toolkits which can be found on the Families Information Service site to ensure they are meeting the needs of the SEN children in their class. These offer support and suggestions for strategies they can use with children based on their specific learning needs.
Half termly assessments assess the progress of the class. As children with Special Educational Needs often make slower progress than their peers, we use PIVOTS where necessary to get a better and more detailed understanding of the small steps of progress they have made. In PIVOTS, objectives are broken down into smaller, more specific steps so teachers can be sure that SEN children are indeed making progress.
Assessments and progress are recorded in OTrack where SEN children’s progress can be monitored and recorded against age-related expectations
Parental concerns are responded to sensitively and appropriately. Where necessary, staff will support parents to complete any paperwork needed to support their child. Parents are always informed about the Local Offer and how they can find out what support is available for their child.
Senior Leaders carry out regular lesson observations of staff to ensure teaching is of the highest quality and children with SEN are being planned for appropriately.
At Burnhope Primary School, our behaviour policy aims to support pupils in making the right choices and see what consequences their behaviour has on themselves and others around them. All children at Burnhope Primary School are respected and listened to by staff who use a restorative approach once an incident has occurred to try and ensure a child understands what they have done and how their actions have affected others.
Staff have regular training from the SENCO and outside agencies as the need arises. Provision is constantly changing with the needs of the children and action is taking promptly by the SENCO and Headteacher to ensure that staff have the necessary training and understanding of specific Special Educational Needs to give our children the best education possible.
In the lead-up to National tests, the necessary measures are taken place to ensure children with SEN have the right access arrangements to achieve the very best they can. Permission is sought to give children additional reading time or to have a reader for maths tests.
For further information please view or download our Accessibility Plan which can be found in the School Policies section of our website.
