St Mary’s Catholic Primary School is an inclusive school where every child is valued and respected as a child of God. Our Mission statement ‘Following Mary in Faith’ echoes this. We work to support all our pupils to make progress in their learning, their emotional and social development, and their independence including those with SEND.
All teachers are teachers of special educational needs. The SEND Code of Practice is followed and all teachers receive training in the SEND Code of Practice. St Mary’s recognises that it is the teachers’ responsibility to meet the needs of all children in their class through high quality teaching, classroom organisation, seating arrangements, carefully planned lessons, a range of teaching styles, teaching materials and differentiation.
Our children with special educational needs are fully integrated into the educational, social and cultural life of school. We recognise the strengths and areas for development of every individual and offer a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum. Most of our children follow a traditional curriculum but a small number of pupils have a more personalised curriculum to match their individual needs. Differentiation of work and support is normal classroom practice for all children so that work is matched to your child’s ability. If your child has SEN work may be further differentiated to suit their needs more closely.
St Mary’s Catholic Primary School supports the recommendations made by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in their support and teaching of pupils with SEND. See link below:
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/send
Your child will experience a range of different strategies to enable them to make progress in their learning. This may involve the use of more practical activities or using resources such as ICT. Children may require additional Teaching Assistant support, sometimes within the classroom or sometimes out of class. Some pupils require targeted intervention. These are planned onto a provision map and interventions are delivered by Teaching Assistants. Interventions may include small group or individual work.
They may be part of an Intervention group or individual programmes such as: RWI Fast track tutoring, RWI Fresh Start, School Led Tutoring ran by Mrs Gemma Pritchard and Mrs Jayne McKay, The National Tutoring Programme, Beat Dyslexia, Daily reading or small RWI, Reading or Maths Groups. They may require playtime support such as through a buddy or with a teaching assistant. Some children may require specialist technology, equipment or resources. Additional support may be offered for, lunch time and break time support or meet and greet in the morning. In addition, children with SEN have a passport with targets and some children may require an Education, Health Care Plan, these are created with support from the Local Authority. All plans are agreed with parents, staff and children and they provide detailed targets for the term ahead.
St Mary’s Catholic Primary School has a SENDCO (Mrs Sarah Clowes) who holds the Postgraduate certificate in the National Award for Special Educational Needs co-ordination qualification. There is also a dedicated team of qualified teaching assistants. They have received a range of training, have excellent subject knowledge and provide outstanding levels of support for academic learning and emotional support. All EHC pupils have a link 1;1 support assistant with whom they work.
We provide information for parents through: meetings with the SENDCO, newsletters, information on the website, information evenings; parents’ evenings; text message service and letters home.
Pupil progress is shared with parents at our termly progress meetings and through the end of year reports. Parents can view overviews of learning and progression grids on the school website and have access to homework tasks on Google Classroom and Purple Mash. Parents can arrange an appointment to discuss progress with the child’s class teacher or SENCO.
We welcome parents to support us by encouraging your child to fully engage with their learning and any interventions offered by: helping them to be organised for their day (including wearing the right uniform, bringing required equipment and books;) ensuring full attendance and excellent punctuality; listening to them read and signing reading diaries, checking that they have completed their homework and signing homework diaries and attending parents’ evenings and review meetings. We will make our best endeavors to take your views, and those of your child, into account.
All pupils with an EHC plan will meet at least once a year with the SENCO to review progress and provision and to complete the annual EHCP review.
The SENCO reports termly to the SEND governor who monitors and reviews the work of the SEND department. Here at St Mary’s Catholic Primary school the SEND Governor is Mrs Jan Fergusson
Where a student is failing to meet expected levels of progress, interventions may be put into place and the outcomes of these monitored at termly meetings.
When action is required to support increased rates of progress, this will follow a graduated response model: Assess, Plan, Do, Review.
Assess: The school will assess the pupil’s needs using observation, teacher assessment, experience, previous attainment and data tracking against peer and national data.
Plan: Parents/carers will be invited to a meeting to plan support and intervention. The student will receive a pupil passport /profile and all teachers who work with the pupil will be made aware of the child’s needs and support required.
Do: Class teachers will implement the plan in their daily teaching and retain responsibility for the pupil if 1:1 or small group support is needed outside the subject.
Review: The parent will be invited to a review of the impact of the support and this will be evaluated at a termly meeting. The class teacher will revise support in line with the outcome of the meeting.
SEND support will be recorded on the child’s ‘Pupil passport’ which will have clear expectations and targets for the student. Progress will be monitored and reviewed termly at a meeting with parents and/ or the pupil, the class teacher and/ or the SENCO.
Pupils with SEND are placed on the SEND register, with the consent of parents and this register is accessible to all staff in the school.
If progress rates are deemed to be inadequate, despite additional support and interventions, advice will be sought from external agencies with the permission of the parents/carers.
Such agencies may include:
Speech and Language Therapy Team
Child Development Clinic
Autism Outreach Team
Hearing Impairment Team
Visual Impairment Team
Educational Psychologist Service
CAMHS – Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service
Occupational Therapy
Physiotherapy Services
Educational Welfare Workers
School Nurse
SEN Hub
For pupils who may have significant or more complex needs or who fail to make expected levels of progress despite SEND support, the school or parents may consider requesting an Educational Health Care plan (EHCP) that will be undertaken by the Local Authority.