Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

• We get information from the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) of your child’s Primary School or previous school.
• We get information from the Local Authority if your child has a current Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).We may get information from external agencies, such as Speech & Language Therapists, Educational Psychologists, Audiologists and Specialist Teacher Advisors, GPs and paediatricians.
• We receive your child’s Key Stage 2 results.
• We carry out standardised tests of all our pupils on entry to the school. This includes Cognitive Ability Tests (CAT), reading and spelling assessments.
• We check that your child is making the expected progress based on assessments and monitoring by subject teachers over the course of time.
• We take account of your views about how you feel your child is progressing in school. Parents contact the school with new information which will impact upon the education of their child.

It is the role of the SENCo (Ms Fitzgerald) to gather this information, identify your child’s individual barriers to learning and coordinate the available support strategies to minimise those barriers. This may involve some additional testing where necessary or liaison with external agencies where appropriate.

In Year we conduct the following tests:

• CATS (Cognitive Ability Tests)
• Dyslexia
• Dyscalculia
• NGRT
• NGST
• Secondary Speech and Language Link

In addition, for our hearing-impaired pupils, we use

• Speech discrimination tests (a variety depending upon need)
• STASS (South Tyneside Assessment of Syntactic Structure)
• Speech perception tests (a variety)
• HARPA (Hearing and Age-Related Phonological Analysis)

We will inform you of any additional test results and arrange a meeting with the SENCo to discuss the implications of those results if necessary.

If the results indicate that additional, outside support, would be helpful, then we will firstly inform you and ask for your consent to share the information with the relevant agencies. These may be Specialist Teacher Advisors, Educational Psychologists, Audiologists, etc.

Meetings with outside agencies may take place in school, at home or at their place of work.

The additional support from outside agencies includes more detailed assessments of your child’s specific needs and we will then work closely with these agencies to ensure that their advice and guidance is followed.

If you are concerned about your child’s needs please contact the school and ask to speak to the SENCo who will arrange a meeting to discuss your concern.

The school will keep you informed about your child’s progress in a number of ways

1. If your child has an Education and Health Care Plan, a review meeting will be held annually to formally review your child’s progress and to review the nature of the support. This meeting will include yourselves, your child and all relevant external agencies.
2. If your child is receiving additional support in the form of targeted interventions, progress will be assessed at the end of an agreed period of time and outcomes shared with yourself and your child.
3. Subject teachers regularly mark your child’s work and note strengths (WWW, ‘what went well’) and short-term targets (EBI, ‘even better if’) and this can be seen in your child’s exercise books.
4. Each subject area has identified key pieces of work that represent milestones in your child’s learning which are formally assessed and graded. These grades contribute to the levels/grades reported in your child’s reports.
5. You will receive three reports on your child’s progress each year, two interim reports with just the grades or levels and one full report with grades and comments from your child’s teachers.
6. Annual Parents’ Evenings, held after the full report, focus on your child’s progress in individual curriculum subjects. This is an opportunity to discuss your child’s progress in different subjects and the teaching staff will provide information about how you can support your child’s learning.
7. If we have any concerns about your child’s progress in any subject area, you will be contacted by your child’s teacher in the first instance.
8. More general concerns may be shared with you by your child’s form tutor, Head of Year or by the SENCo.

If, at any time, you have concerns about your child’s progress, please contact your child’s tutor or the SENCo and we will arrange a meeting for you with the relevant teacher(s).

It is the role of the SENCo to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the various intervention strategies and report to the Headteacher and the Governors so that we can constantly strive to improve our provision. We rigorously track the progress of our pupils to ensure that any interventions have a positive impact on their educational progress.

Although there are areas of the school which are not accessible to pupils and visitors with physical disabilities, the school will take account of the needs of pupils and visitors with physical difficulties and sensory impairments when planning and undertaking future improvements and refurbishments of the site and premises, such as improved access, lighting and colour schemes, and more accessible facilities and fittings.

With the exception of the sports halls, technology, drama, art, and music classrooms, all other teaching rooms have been acoustically treated and have sound field systems installed.

The school has one disabled parking bay at the front of the school.

There have been improvements made to the visual environment, including painted rails and steps completed following assessment by the disability assessment team.

There is a specialist resourced provision for pupils with a hearing impairment with a suite of three acoustically treated rooms providing optimal listening conditions for one-to-one or small group tutorial work.

There is height adjustable furniture in one of the food technology rooms and the wood work room to allow access for a wheelchair user.

There are alternative methods of communication with home on request.

We are committed to a total communication strategy in our Hearing-Impaired resourced base and have employed a communication support worker when necessary.

We have specialist staff to facilitate learning for EAL students and communication with home of EAL parents/carers and obtain the support of the Ethnic Minority and Traveller Advisory Service if we have pupils who speak a language not spoken by one of our staff.

We are committed to working closely with parents/carers and any member of staff can be contacted in the first instance. This includes:

• Form tutors and subject teachers
• Heads of Year
• Health and Welfare Officer
• SENCo
• Deputy Headteachers and Assistant Headteachers

Where a member of staff is unable to provide the information required they will support the parent/carer to make contact with the appropriate person.

There are also regular arrangements for involvement and consultation with parents/carers. This includes:

• Annual Parents’ evenings
• Open mornings
• An annual Open Evening (in September)
• Option choice open evening

Your child will be involved in the planning of individual target setting.

You and your child will be involved in meetings with external sources of support, including the Educational Psychology team, Specialist Advisory Teachers, Children and Adolescent’s Mental Health Service (CAMHS), Speech and Language Therapists and EMTAS (English Second Language support)