Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND)
SENDCO Contact Details: Miss E Rawson / 01924 891685
At St. John the Baptist Catholic Primary School, we are committed to enabling every pupil to achieve their full potential. We promote high standards of teaching and learning and ensure that all children, regardless of need or background, have access to a broad, balanced, and inclusive curriculum.
Quality-first teaching remains central to our approach; but we also recognise that some pupils may require additional support to reach their targets. We identify and address these needs at the earliest opportunity through close collaboration with parents, carers, and external agencies.
Class teachers, supported by additional staff, use adaptive teaching strategies to plan and deliver learning experiences that are responsive to pupils’ needs and ensure equitable access to the curriculum. This approach allows all pupils to engage successfully and make sustained progress.
Pupils with additional needs have a Learner Profile and a Supporting Me to Learn plan, both of which are reviewed regularly. These documents outline the child’s strengths, needs, targets, and strategies for support. A range of evidence-based interventions is implemented, monitored, and evaluated to ensure maximum effectiveness.
Ongoing assessment and regular review meetings ensure that progress is tracked, targets are updated, and provision is adapted as needed. Pupil voice is central to this process, ensuring that children are actively involved in shaping their own learning journey.
SEND means special educational needs and disabilities. Children have a special need if they have a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made. This will be if the child:
- Has significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of the same age.
or - Has a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for children of school age within Local Authority Area.
The area of special need will be identified as:
- Cognition and Learning (general of specific learning difficulties)
- Communication and Interaction (speech and language difficulties, autistic spectrum disorders)
- Behaviour, Emotional and Social
- Physical, Sensory and Medical (hearing, visual impairments, physical and medical difficulties)
The Wakefield Local Offer can be found at the following link http://mylocaloffer.org/Wakefield
What is the Local Offer?
The Local Offer was first introduced in the Green Paper (March 2011) as a local offer of all services to support disabled children and children with SEN and their families. This easy to understand information will set out what is normally available in schools to help children with lower-level SEN as well as the options available to support families who need additional help to care for their child.
The Children and Families Bill takes forward the Government’s commitments to improve services for vulnerable children and support strong families. It underpins wider reforms to ensure that all children and young people can succeed, no matter what their background. The bill will reform the systems for adoption, looked after children, family justice and special educational needs.
The government is transforming the system for children and young people with special educational needs (SEN), including those who are disabled, so that services consistently support the best outcomes for them.
The Bill will extend the SEN system from birth to 25, giving children, young people and their parents greater control and choice in decisions and ensuring needs are properly met. It takes forward the reform programme set out in ‘Support and aspiration: a new approach to special education needs and disability – progress and next steps‘ including by:
- replacing old statements with a new birth- to-25 education, health and care plan
- offering families personal budgets
- improving cooperation between all the services that support children and their families, particularly requiring local authorities and health authorities to work together
Extract from School Inspection Report, 28 and 29 November 2023
“Pupils with SEND are very well supported. This is a truly inclusive school. There are clear strategies for identifying pupils’ needs. Pupils access appropriate interventions, such as speech and language therapy. Leaders check that interventions are meeting pupils’ needs. The school works closely with external agencies, such as child and mental health services. Staff work closely with families too”.
SENDCO
The Special Educational Needs disabilities Coordinator (SENDCO) in school is:
Miss Emma Rawson
Roles and Responsibilities of the Special Educational Needs disabilities Coordinator (SENDCO)
- The SENDCO is responsible for the operation of the Special Educational Needs disabilities Policy and coordination of specific provision made to support individual children with SEND.
- The SENDCO liaises with staff to monitor the children’s progress and plan further interventions where progress is slower than expected.
- The SENDCO has regular contact with a wide range of external agencies that are able to give more specialised advice.
If you have any concerns regarding SEND, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Miss Rawson, our School SENDCo, can be contacted via the school office on 01924 891685 or by email at office@sjb.bkcat.uk.
Compliments and Complaints regarding SEND provision at St John the Baptist
Compliments are always greatly received and can be passed on either directly to staff and our SENDCO, Miss Rawson, or formally recorded via our regular questionnaires to parents or in the form of a letter to the Headteacher.
We hope that complaints about our SEND provision will be rare, however, if there should be a concern the process outlined in the school Complaints Policy should be followed
Further information can be found in the Complaints Policy in the policies section of our website
If you would like to discuss your SEND requirements in detail please contact Miss Rawson at school. (details on the link at the bottom of this page)
Special Educational Needs and Inclusion Policy (SEND)
SEND Information Report and Our Offer of SEND
We are a Dyslexia friendly school