Special Educational Needs

The Special Educational Needs Code of Practice 2014 states that a child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for them. A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty if they:

1. Have a significantly greater difficulty in learning that the majority of others of the same age; or
2. Have a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in a mainstream school or mainstream post-16 institutions.

difficulties with learning/Special Educational Needs/Disability (SEND)?

SEN Strategic Lead

Chenese Mead and Keith Middleton (joint SENCOs)            cholme8@ccc.rbksch.org              

Responsible for:

• Coordinating all the support for children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and developing the school’s SEND arrangements  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.
• Providing appropriate training for teachers and support staff to ensure that they are equipped to meet the differing needs of SEND pupils.

Class/subject teacher

Responsible for:

• Monitoring 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.
• 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 procedures are followed in their classroom and for all the pupils they teach with any SEND.

Headteacher
Responsible for:

• The day to day management of all aspects of the school, this includes the support for children with SEND.
• Giving responsibility to the SENCO and class teachers but still being responsible for ensuring that your child’s needs are met.
• Making sure that the Governing Body is kept up to date about any issues in the school relating to SEND.

Inclusion Governor
Responsible for:
Making sure that the necessary support is made for any child who attends the school who has SEND.

Chessington School is a mainstream school. All children and young people are entitled to an education that enables them to make progress so that they:

• Achieve their best
• Become confident individuals who are proud of their achievements, their success and their development and
• Make a successful transition into adulthood, whether into employment, further or higher education or training

At Chessington School we can make provision for every kind of frequently occurring special educational need without a statement of special educational needs/Education, Health and Care plan, for instance dyslexia, dyspraxia, speech and language needs, learning difficulties and behaviour difficulties, ADHD, social, emotional and mental health difficulties, autism and asperger’s syndrome. There are other kinds of special educational need which do not occur as frequently and with which the school is less familiar, but we can access training and advice so that these kinds of need can be met.

The school also currently meets the need of pupils with a statement of special educational need/Education, Health and Care plan with the following kinds of special educational need: with dyslexia, cognitive learning difficulties, ASD and global delay. Decisions on the admission of pupils with a statement of special education need/Education, Health and Care plan are made by the Local Authority.

The admission arrangements of pupils without a statement of special educational needs/Education, Health and Care plan do not discriminate against or disadvantage disabled children or those with special educational needs and will follow the usual school admission procedures.

High quality teaching, differentiated for individual pupils, is the first step in responding to pupils who have or may have SEND. Additional intervention and support cannot compensate for a lack of good quality teaching.CCC  regularly and carefully reviews the quality of teaching for all pupils, including those at risk of underachievement. This includes reviewing, and where necessary improving, teachers’ understanding of strategies to identify and support vulnerable pupils and their knowledge of the SEN most frequently encountered. (SEND Code of Practice  6.34)

We strive to ensure that our approach to teaching and learning is of high quality and personalised to meet the individual needs of the majority of children/young people. Some children/young people need educational provision that is additional to or different from this. This is special educational provision.

At Chessington School all clubs, trips and activities offered to pupils are available to pupils with special educational needs. For some pupils, ‘reasonable adjustments’ may need to be made.

Please find further information on the reasonable adjustments for pupils with additional needs by following the link below:

https://www.afclocaloffer.org.uk/uploads/afclocaloffer/document/file/321/reasonable_adjustments.pdf

Other in school arrangements may include adjustments to the way your student access’s assembly or break/lunch where they can be given permission to avoid these times of transition and unstructured time. Reasonable adjustments however are done in partnership with families and carers.

Chessington Community College also offers a range of extra-curricular clubs and these can change on a half termly basis. Support for SEND children can be arranged on discussion. Up to date club information is available from the school office or website.

Chessington School is an inclusive mainstream school and all students are supported by their class teachers 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 students 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 a gap in their understanding/learning and needs some extra support to help them make the best possible progress.
• Reasonable adjustments can be made when required.

The school currently meets the needs of students with a statement of educational need/Education, Health and Care Plan with the following kinds of special educational need:

• Speech and Language Needs e.g. hearing impaired
• Social Communication Needs e.g. autistic spectrum disorder
• Cognition and Learning Needs e.g. dyslexia
• Sensory and/or Physical disabilities e.g. wheel chair users

The school can also support any type of frequently occurring SEND and can access training and support to for the less common types of SEND.

Pupils are identified as having special educational needs or disabilities under two stages of support;

Stage 1: K – SEND Support

Stage 2: S/E – Statement of educational needs or Education, Health and Care Plan

Stage 1 – SEND Support at Chessington School is defined as children who do not have significant or complex education needs and their needs are mainly met by Quality First Teaching and targeted interventions. However, advice may be sought from external professionals to ensure that all the support they are receiving is appropriate to their needs and well targeted. A termly review will take place making sure parents and pupils views are listened to and acted upon.

For your child this could also mean that:

• They are supported by an additional adult during lessons
• They access specific interventions to support their needs, e.g. sound training, mindfulness groups, social, emotional and mental health 1:1 or 1:1 or small groups support for specific literacy difficulties
• External professionals (e.g. Educational Psychologist (EP) or Speech and Language Therapist (SALT) will come in and work with your child and your child’s teacher to ensure that the best support is in place and make changes to the way your child is supported, if necessary (parental permission will be sought)
• As parents, you will be asked to come to termly review meetings for your child with a class teacher, the SENCO or head of key stage, which may also be attended by external professionals
• Your child will have his/her own ‘SEN support plan’ also known as a ‘Pupil Passport’ which has specific targets and outcomes for him/her as well as a profile about them and provision they are receiving. It is co-constructed with SENCO, class teachers, parents and the individual pupil and reviewed each term.

Stage 2 – Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan/Statement at Chessington School is for the few children who require a highly individualised curriculum to meet their complex and high-levels of needs. Your child will have undergone a Statutory Assessment by the Local Authority to assess the level of support they require, and this will have been heavily evidenced by the work of the external specialists/professionals that were involved at Stage 1. The Local Authority will also ask for your views during the Statutory Assessment process.

Schools may receive additional funding to meet the requirements of EHC Plans/Statements to ensure that the appropriate support is put in place. The school will work with you to ensure that you fully understand the type of support available to your child and how we plan to add this to your child’s timetable each day. We are always keen for you to share your thoughts and ideas with us during this process and we also seek the opinions and views of the child.

For your child this would mean:

• Additional support from a teacher or teaching assistant per week; this can be in the form of additional adult support in class or as part of specific groups/targeted interventions
• The progress of your child will continue to be monitored on a termly basis to ensure sufficient progress is being made
• A timetable of support that is shared with the child and with you, the parents
• A ‘‘SEN support plan” as described in Stage 1 which takes into account the child and parents view
• An Annual Review (AR) of SEND – this is a legal requirement to ensure that the EHC Plan/Statement is still applicable to your child and no changes need to be made to it
• Have carefully supported transition to further education to ensure that appropriate support continues to be put in place as they move on from the secondary phase
• Termly reviews (one of which will be the AR)
• Continued support from external professionals and specialists, e.g. EP, SALT.

The SEN Code of Practice (2014) describes adequate progress as:

• Is similar to that of children of the same age who had the same starting point
• Matches or improves on the pupil’s previous rate of progress
• That which allows the attainment gap to close between the pupil and children of the same age

For pupils at stage 2 (those with a statement of special educational needs/Education, Health and Care Plan) there will be termly review of the provision made for the child, where we will set targets for the term ahead, which will enable an evaluation of the effectiveness of the special provision to be made.

The best person to talk to in the first instance is your child’s tutor or subject teachers. They will be able to discuss your concerns and talk further about the possible options.

If you are still concerned about progress, you can speak to Mrs Mead who is the SENCO. You can make an appointment with Mrs Mead through the school office in person or by emailing cholme8@ccc.rbksch.org

If your child’s subject teacher has a concern about their progress or learning needs, they will set up a meeting with you to discuss this further. During the meeting, you will typically discuss:

• The area(s) of the curriculum that show your child is not making the progress that we would expect them to
• The interventions/support that we aim to put in place for them and for how long
• Any concerns that you may have, including any family history of learning difficulties

Any referrals that may need to be made to external professionals, to gain further advice.

• The school budget, received from Kingston 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 Assistant Headteacher for Inclusion 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.

The needs of the children are paramount in the decision-making process and we use our budget to fully support them in any area of need.

1. At Chessington School, we have a range of professionals who work with our SEND pupils. These include:

• Teaching Assistants for pupils
• Educational Psychologists
• Speech and Language Therapists
• Occupational Therapists
• Physiotherapists
• Emotional health service
• Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS)
• School Nurse
• Social workers

For some pupils with the most need for help in this area, we can provide the following: mentor time with our ELSA, 1:1 with our Social, Emotional and Mental Health Needs support coordinator or a referral to external agencies such as Educational Psychology, Emotional Health Service, CAMHS or Relate.

Pupils with emotional and social needs because of their special educational needs will be supported to enable them to develop and mature appropriately.

We are interested in hearing parents/carers and pupils’ views. The pastoral team are available to meet with parents through arranged appointments, which are in addition to the Parent Consultation Evenings. The pastoral team will review with pupils individually and provide them with opportunity to discuss what would work better for them through conferencing.  Concerns from both pupils and parents should be raised with the pastoral team as soon as they arise.

The school uses its Anti-Bullying Policy throughout the school. Children and young people with SEND can be more likely to be the victims of bullying, so it is important to ensure that they report any behaviour that concerns them immediately to school staff and parents. We will take any incidents seriously and follow the procedures set out in the policy.

When a pupil has been identified as having special educational needs because special educational provision is being made for him or her, the pupil will be consulted about and involved in the arrangements made for them as part of person-centred planning. Pupils’ views will be gathered through conferencing and child-friendly questionnaires and if considered appropriate, children will attend the review meetings. Pupils who have statements or Education Health and Care Plans will be invited to attend their Annual Review meetings. A very key part of pupil consultation is via their termly review of their pupil passport where they are able to comment on and take ownership in areas such as:

• You can help me by
• I find it difficult to
• I will help myself by
• My star qualities are
• What is important to me now and in the future

Other examples of pupil consultation include;

• Pupil questionnaires
• Self-assessment
• Setting own targets
• School council
• Peer mentors
• Sports leaders
• Buddies
• Assess, plan, do review meetings

All teachers receive termly training from the Inclusion Leader/SENCO on various SEND-related areas during allocated staff meetings. This is often designed to give staff further strategies and guidance on how to support SEND children more effectively. Support staff are also invited to this training and also access separate training to enhance their skills further. This training can be also be delivered by external professionals, using specific objectives agreed with the SENCO.

Examples of recent training include:

• Understanding Autism
• Supporting students with SEMH
• Understanding the SEND reforms
• Using effective questioning when supporting children
• Behaviour for learning
• Visualising/Verbalising and Pre Teaching
• Memory

Staff also attend courses that are provided by Achieving for Children or by external providers. Staff disseminate this information to others to ensure that relevant training is shared. If the training has been very successful for one member of staff, the school will sometimes invite that trainer in to provide a session for the whole staff team.

All class teachers plan their lessons thoroughly, in accordance with school policy. Part of this policy states that children should have work that is differentiated, so that they can access it as independently as possible. This includes children with SEND.

Teachers work to ensure that the planning shows adaptations for children with SEND and that it is presented to each learner in a way that is suitable for them. For example, if a child is a very visual learner, picture clues and visual instructions are used to support their learning. If a child has fine motor difficulties, a scribe may be used or a child can have access to a lap top.

Teachers will seek advice from experienced teaching staff, as well as the Inclusion Leader/SENCO to ensure their planning meets the individual needs of identified children.

Planning, assessments and the children’s books are monitored regularly by the Senior Leadership Team to ensure that they are meeting the needs of all identified children. Support is offered to all staff as necessary.

Our pastoral teams and support staff including our attendance officer and reception staff have a good knowledge of pupils with SEND and attend training to ensure they can differentiate their ways of communicating to enable all pupils to be engaged in all aspects of daily school life.

Your child’s progress will be measured in the following ways:

• All children’s progress is monitored on a termly basis so that we can identify any children who are working below the expected level, or who are making slower progress
• Children accessing interventions are also monitored so that we can evaluate the impact of the intervention for individual children. We do this by setting an entry and exit criteria at the start of the intervention programme.
• Teachers and TAs work together to discuss the progress of children in their class. Work is then planned accordingly to ensure children continue to make progress
• If your child is making less-than expected progress the class teacher will ask to speak with you so that necessary support can be put in place at an appropriate higher level
• Parents will receive an annual school report which will also discuss the progress of your child across the whole year. There is also a chance to meet with the teacher three times a year, so that progress can be reported on regularly.
• If your child has identified SEND at stage 1 or stage 2, we will discuss progress and outcomes at their termly review.

As a school, we operate an ‘open-door policy’ where parents are able to speak to their subject teachers, the pastoral team or the SENCO at a mutually convenient time – this can be after school, during the school day or before school. The Inclusion Leader/SENCO is non-class-based, so is more able to discuss any concerns you may have during the school day.

At Chessington School, we also have two experienced key stage support officers (non-class-based) who are available to offer support to all our parents, including parents of SEND pupils.

We also work with the Parent Partnership Officers at KIDS Richmond and Kingston SEND Information, Advice and Support Service (SENDIASS). This organisation supports parents of children with SEND and offers advice. Their contact number is: 020 8831 6179. Further information can be found at  www.afclocaloffer.org.uk

We work closely with social services if there is necessary involvement for a family. They may have a social worker or family support worker who we liaise with and often provide space in school for professionals to meet with children and parents.

You can make an appointment with Mrs Mead our SENCO through the school office in person or by emailing.

Chessington School is fully accessible to children with physical difficulties, as our classrooms upstairs can be accessed by a lift. Staff have had necessary training to ensure the safe evacuation of pupils with physical disabilities in an emergency.

We ensure that appropriate equipment and resources are in place for pupils with identified SEND, to enable them to access the curriculum as fully as possible. Advice about appropriate resources is obtained from relevant professionals. Students have access to individual visual timetables as well as visual learning schedules to help the access their learning each day.

Our extra-curricular activities and school trips are accessible to children with SEND, with reasonable adjustments being made to suit the individual needs of the child.

The same arrangements for the treatment of complaints at Chessington School are used for complaints about provision made for special educational needs and disabilities. In accordance with our Complaints Policy, we encourage parents to discuss their concerns initially with the class teacher or key stage leader. The SENCo could also attend this meeting. If the complaint is not satisfactorily resolved, then an appointment should be made with the Headteacher in order to resolve the issue before making the complaint formal to the Chair of the Governing Body.

At Chessington School we strongly believe in planning ahead for a smooth transition. We work closely with other schools and education providers to ensure that children moving to us and on from us are given the appropriate support that they need as they further their education.

If your child is moving on from primary school or simply moving to a different school, we will do the following things:

• Make contact with the school’s SENCO as early as possible, to arrange for them to visit us to discuss the individual needs of your child and to meet your child, as appropriate
• Invite you to meet the new school’s SENCO and discuss any issues or concerns you may have about transition. We would also invite any external professionals, as appropriate
• Work with the new school to ensure that they have the necessary paperwork, including examples of your child’s current timetable, extra provision/interventions and strategies to support them.
• Provide our contact details for your child’s new school, should they have any further questions
• Attend local transition days
• Invite students who require additional transition afternoons to these ahead of final move

If your child is moving on to further education, we will do the following things:

• Provide careers advice and support your child in additional visits to their chosen further education providers
• Discuss and plan for preparing for adulthood at termly review from year 9 up
• Ensure that special educational needs and outcomes are adjusted in preparation for transition to further education
• Make contact with the further educations settings inclusion manager as early as possible to support your child and share relevant information
• Ensure transition to further education is clearly outlined.