Most children and young people with special educational needs or a disability (SEND) go to a mainstream nursery, school or college and are supported by their staff, resources and funds. Teachers and other professionals regularly review how a child or young person is getting on and support them to learn, develop and feel safe. This is called special educational needs support or SEN support.
All schools and all school and academy sixth forms, sixth form colleges, further education colleges and 16-19 academies have funding for children with SEND. Early years settings such as nurseries can also get extra money to support a child with SEND.
SEN support in nurseries, schools and colleges is based around the specific needs of each child or young person. The staff, equipment, resources and support that help your child has are decided using something called the graduated response. This is an ‘assess, plan, do, and review’ cycle. That means if your child has special educational needs, the school or college should:
- assess what support they need
- plan the support
- do the support and then
- review how well it’s working
Information about your child’s needs, support and goals should be written down in a plan and that should be used by staff and updated regularly. Schools and colleges use all kinds of plans, so your child’s plan may look different from one for a child from a different school. What’s important is that your child has a clearly written plan which lists all their needs, support and goals. For most children and young people with SEND the support the school gives works and they make progress.
But sometimes the support for a child isn’t enough or isn’t right. Your child may not make the progress that’s expected and start to fall behind other children their age. Or you may find that their difficulties in school get worse not better and behaviour at school or home becomes more challenging.
If things aren’t going well for your child and they’re not making progress, your first step is to ask for a review of their nursery, school or college plan. At that review you can talk about the support they’re getting, what may need to change and how you’ll know if any new support is working. You can ask whether your child needs more support or whether some of their needs aren’t clear.
If reviewing your child’s plan and making changes to their support doesn’t make a difference, you can ask whether a needs assessment for an Education Health and Care (EHC) plan should be the next step.
For more information please look at our leaflet: Special educational needs support in school