SEN Local Offer

• When pupils have an identified special educational need or disability before they join our academy, we work very closely with the people who already know them and use the information already available to us to identify what the possible barriers to learning may be. This helps us to plan appropriate support strategies.
• If you tell us you think your child has a special educational need we will discuss this with you and assess your child accordingly. Often these assessments will be carried out by the school, sometimes school seek advice from more specialised services such as Educational Psychology, Rushall Inclusion Services or Speech Therapy – we always ask for your permission first and share our findings with you along with the next steps we need to take.
• If teachers feel that your child has a special educational need, this may be because they are not making the same progress as other pupils. The earlier we take action and modify our provision, the sooner we can resolve concerns and help children towards success. We will observe your child’s learning characteristics and how they cope within our learning environments, we will assess their understanding of what we are doing in school and where appropriate use tests/further observations to pinpoint what is causing difficulty. This will help us to decide what is happening and why. If school become concerned about your child you will be contacted immediately by their class teacher or the school’s SENCO, Mrs Westwood

SENCO- Special Needs and Disabilities coordinator- Mrs Westwood

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.
• Creating pupil profiles/passports to ensure that all staff who work with your child are aware of their needs and difficulties.
• Monitoring the teaching of SEND and ensuring that ‘Quality First Teaching’ is taking place in all classrooms.
• Monitoring of interventions and TA support to ensure the appropriate challenge is in place.
• Liaising with the SEND link governor to ensure that we are held to account for our provision.

Class 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.
• Updating pupil profiles/passports 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 under their direction, are helped to deliver the planned work/programme for your child, so they can achieve the best possible progress.
• Ensuring that the school’s SEND Policy is followed in their classroom and for all the pupils they teach with any SEND.

Principal – Mrs Benton

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 Link Governor- Mr Rochelle

Responsible for:

• Making sure that the necessary support is made for any child who attends the school who has SEND, by meeting with the SENCO on a regular basis and updating the governing body.

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 have too. We will not make any referrals without your input and consent. We will also listen to any concerns that you have concerning home behaviour and understanding and support you with strategies to use at home.
• Where appropriate we will write a pupil profile/passport. This will detail any strengths, likes and dislikes, how your child likes to learn and any other information relevant to him/her as well as 3 main targets to support academic progress being made.
• We hold a review meeting every term, which allows all agencies supporting the child to come together with you as parents/carers, to look at the progress being made and celebrate successes. It also gives us chance to plan for our next steps together.
• Plan any additional support your child may receive- this may include home learning that sometimes runs alongside our IMPACT sessions. This gives you a chance to come in and see how we teach certain strategies. It will also include any in-class support needed with a teaching assistant.
• Our staff are always available at mutually convenient times to discuss any concerns you may have about your child.

1. Quality First Teaching. Class teacher input via excellent targeted classroom 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 gaps in their understanding/learning and needs some extra support to help them make the best possible progress.

All children in school should be getting this as a part of excellent classroom practice when needed.

2. Specific group work with in a smaller group of children. These groups, often called Intervention groups by schools, may be:

• Run in the classroom or outside.
• Run by a teacher or most often a teaching assistant who has had training to run these groups.

However the class teacher remains responsible for the progress of your child at all times.

Read a full outline of support

• Our SENCO leads a team of talented support staff who are all trained to support pupils with a wide range of educational, social and emotional needs.
• Our team are able to undertake small group work or one-to-one support, as appropriate to meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs or disabilities.
• We have regular contacts with Speech and Language Therapists, Occupational Therapy and the Visual impairment Team, some of whom work in school every week.
• Our Family and Multi Agency Link Coordinator is a very supportive member of the team with an excellent knowledge of how to support our children and their families.
• Our assessment co-ordinator and SENCO analyse pupil performance data half-termly to ensure every child is making the best possible progress.
• We have a dedicated Educational Psychologist, who visits our school regularly to observe and assess pupils, and offer advice and support to both home and school.

• We have a dedicated classroom and nurture room that are available for specialist groups such Pragmatics, Circle of Friends, expressive language, nurture group, 5 minute boxes, social and emotional help and support.
• Our SEND team make bespoke individual resources for pupils with special educational needs that support their specific learning targets and needs, and reflects the learning undertaken by their peers.
• We have a wide range of engaging reading materials e.g. Lexia, Big Cats books, Four Corners, Rigby Star, IPad reading apps and high interest schemes for struggling older readers. These resources to appeal to both aural and visual learners and specialist ‘catch-up’ schemes help to support children with gaps in their knowledge.
• We have a wide range of ICT equipment available to help motivate pupils and access learning. These include I-pads, programmable toys(Beebots), talking tins, Easi-Speak microphones and talking books.
• We seek advice and equipment from outside agencies as and when the need arises, such as specialist seating, or handrails and steps in toilets.
• We use a range of software on our school learning platform/website to help pupils engage with subjects they find difficult, to practice basic skills and work towards becoming independent learners.
• We use Makaton signing and symbols in all classrooms to remind children of our key rules in school. good waiting, good listening, good sitting, good thinking, good liming up, good talking, good looking. We also use these on reward charts/cards to aid children with management of their own behaviour and we use these to create personal visual timetables for children with social and communication difficulties.

• All our staff are trained in a variety of approaches which means that we are able to adapt to a range of SEN: – specific learning difficulties. These include; dyslexia, Autistic Spectrum Disorder; speech, language and communication needs; and behavioural, social and emotional difficulties.
• Many of our staff are all able to use basic Makaton signing, and some staff are trained to a higher level.
• We adapt reading material by adding Makaton signs to reading books for children with communication difficulties, and create personal reading books using individual children as characters, or create books around our own school themes that match personal abilities and needs.
• We are a dyslexia friendly school.
• We have a dyslexia specialist teacher in school who advises all staff on the best way to ensure progress for children with dyslexic tendencies and deliverers the necessary training in school.
• We use a number of teaching methods that are adapted to the needs of both groups and individual pupils, including picture exchange cards, objects of reference and individual workstation tasks.
• We are a very inclusive school. Wherever possible children are taught alongside their peers in clear differentiated groups. Teachers adapt their teaching constantly in order to cater for their pupils’ needs, and plan individual timetables where necessary. When appropriate, staff are deployed to give children additional support in small groups outside the classroom, or to provide one-to-one support.
• All our staff are trained to adapt resources to either offer a greater level of support or to make learning more challenging so that every child is able to achieve their very best.
• We use additional schemes/materials so that staff can use as a resource to ensure work is always at the right level for pupils with special educational needs, or those who are gifted and talented.
• We offer a wide range of in-house communication groups; these usually focus on Attention and Listening, Speech and Language and Social Communication, which include Talk Boost.
• We use personal visual timelines or object timelines to help children understand what activity or part of the day is coming next.

• In the Foundation Stage we track progress against the Early Years Foundation Stage ages and stages of child development.
• In Key Stage One we use P scales where appropriate to assess progress that is in smaller steps than the usual national curriculum levels.
• We use an online system called DC Pro, to track pupil attainment and progress against targets. This information is then used by phase leaders and the SENCO to ensure that we are targeting the correct children for maths, writing or reading.
• We gather views of parents and carers at our termly parent consultation meetings and make notes of important points so that they can be revisited at each successive meeting to review progress.
• Parents of children with special educational needs are invited to a special review meeting each term where we discuss progress and set individual education plans outlining small step progress targets.
• We use staff meetings to get all teachers alongside teaching assistants to moderate anonymous pieces of work to check our judgements are correct. We set challenging targets that are based on nationally agreed guidelines on progress.
• We check how well a pupil makes progress in each lesson. Levels on the front of the children’s books help them to understand what is expected of them if they are to succeed.

• We can access support from specialist teachers for advice about accessing the curriculum and SEND related needs such as speech, language and communication; hearing impairment; visual impairment; behaviour related needs; severe learning difficulties and autism.
• Our local authority provides educational psychologist support for assessment, advice and training.
• Our local authority provides an early years advisory teacher who supports children with SEN when they make the transition to our nursery from pre-school settings.
• We have a Parent Support Advisor, who works closely with staff, pupils and families in raising attendance and punctuality.
• We get support from speech and language therapy (SALT) to train our staff and advise on strategies and programmes. We refer pupils for assessment if we believe they need a period of therapy.
• We liaise with the School’s Health Advisor regularly.
• We get support from Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy for pupils who need assessment for issues such as special seating or advice about exercise programmes. They guide school staff in meeting the needs of pupils with disabilities. We also regularly access support from Outreach services for additional advice and guidance about specific children.
• Together we review your child’s progress and agree what everyone will do to make teaching more effective and learning easier. We always seek the voice of the child when carrying out reviews, whether they come in person, if appropriate or they complete a pupil voice sheet, with help if necessary.

• We have an after school club with trained staff capable of looking after pupils with both special educational needs and disabilities.
• We have termly educational visits, and many other visitors to school bring our curriculum to life. Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities are always included in these and we provide staff to support their full involvement if needed. We always choose enhanced school provision to be accessible by all.

• Schools receive funding for all pupils with special educational needs and we are able to provide what pupils need from this (including equipment). The local authority will top-up funding for pupils with a high level of need.
• If a pupil’s education, health and care plan identifies something that is significantly different to what is usually available, there will be additional funding allocated. Parents will have a say in how this is used. You will be told if this means you are eligible for a personal budget. This must be used to fund any agreed plan formulated by professional advisors, parents and school.

• We listen to what children tell us about how they like to learn. Their views and feelings are important to us and have an impact on our practice.
• Our children are made aware of the support that surrounds them in school. They know who to talk to if that are worried or have any concerns they want to share. Our open door policy means that they have access to the head teacher at all times.
• The academy always welcomes parents into school and encourages them to discuss any issues however small they feel they are.
• Parents are welcome into the academy as volunteers in classrooms, providing a vital extra pair of hands that enhances our provision and celebrates our partnership working.
• Our Family and Multi Agency Link Coordinator meets regularly with parents and will visit them in their home if this is needed.
• We invite parents into school to have coffee and a chat at every achievement assembly, giving them chance to celebrate in our successes.

• Our inclusive philosophy aims to support parents of children with special educational needs or disabilities so that their child’s journey through our school is smooth, successful and anxiety free. Our practice is enhanced by your views, it is important that people listen to them and that you are satisfied with what happens as a result of our collaboration.
• The Walsall Parent Partnership Service can offer advice and support to parents of pupils with special educational needs or disabilities. Their telephone number is 01922 650330.
• Our SENCO and our Parent Support Advisor can put parents in touch with a wide range of support groups as appropriate to the specific needs of your child.

• Our school operates an open door policy. Your first point of contact is your child’s class teacher, who is always available at a mutually convenient. In addition, our Family and Multi Agency Link Coordinator or our SENCO are here to listen to your concerns. If you are not satisfied that your concern has been addressed then you may speak to the head teacher at any time. If she cannot solve your issues, then you may speak to any of our school governors. We have a governor responsible for SEND, Mr Jay Rochelle, who may be contacted through the clerk to the governors at the main school office.
• If your concern is with the local authority, follow a similar path. The person who will log and track your complaint is the head teacher.
• The local authority has a multi-agency panel who consider unresolved issues. You are entitled to appeal against any decision made about your child that you are not in agreement with. They will offer you an independent mediator if you are still not satisfied. The mediator will try to help you to agree a resolution with the local authority that you are happy with. Telephone 01922 686200.
• Alternatively, the Parent Partnership Service (01922 650330) provide independent information and advice.
• Parents can also contact a number of advice agencies including; http://www.ipsea.org.uk/ , http://www.sossen.org.uk/.