Recent changes in SEND Legislation
The changes in the Children and Families Bill affect the way children with special educational needs (SEN) are supported in schools. The new approach began in September 2014 and places children at the centre of planning. The key principles of the new legislation are:
- Young people and their families should be involved in discussions about the support they need, so they can share their knowledge and feed back to the school on the young person’s progress.
- Education, health and care plans (EHC) will replace Statements of Special Educational Needs.
- School Action and School Action Plus have been replaced by one school based category of need known as ‘Special Education Needs Support’ (SEN Support). All children are closely monitored and their progress tracked each term. Those at SEN Support are additionally tracked by the SENCo.
- The SEND CoP 2014 outlines four broad categories of SEND:
- Communication and interaction (such as autistic spectrum and language disorders)
- Cognition and learning (such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia, moderate learning difficulties and global development delay)
- Social, emotional and mental health (such as ADHD, ADD, attachment disorders, emotional difficulties, mental health difficulties)
- Physical and sensory (such as hearing or vision impaired)
At St Patrick’s, we currently provide for, or anticipate providing for children within all of these SEND categories.