At Riddings Infant and Nursery School we aim to provide a happy, safe and inclusive environment where a broad and balanced curriculum celebrates our diverse range of pupils and their individual skills, talents and contributions.

Across the whole school high quality teaching will be provided that is differentiated to meet the needs of all learners. Staff use a variety of strategies to support pupils with a wide range of needs and will seek further professional advice and support as well as undertaking additional training as appropriate in order to achieve this. Advice may be sought from other services including:

Speech and Language Therapy, Physical/ Visual/ Heading Impairment Services, the Support Service for special educational needs, the Educational Psychologist, the behaviour support service, the school nurses, health visitors, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapists and other medical professionals.

These professionals will work with pupils, families and the school to provide advice and guidance regarding how to best support a pupil to meet their needs effectively.

Quality of classroom teaching provided to children with SEND is monitored through a number of processes that include:

1. Learning walks and observations by the SLT, the SENCO, TAs and external verifiers
2. On-going assessment of progress made by children with SEND both in school and through regular well-being and moderation meetings including opportunities identified through our cluster of schools.
3. Work sampling and scrutiny of planning to ensure effective matching of work to child’s needs, the quality and effectiveness of interventions provided.
4. Teacher/TA meetings with the SENCO to provide advice and guidance on meeting the needs of children with SEND.
5. Attendance and behaviour records.

For pupils with a disability reasonable adjustments will be made both to the learning environment and methods to support pupils in accessing the curriculum. Further information regarding adaptations and support across the curriculum can be found by visiting our curriculum pages here:

Our Curriculum Subjects | Riddings Infant and Nursery School (secure-primarysite.net)

Where adaptations include the need for access to auxiliary aids and services school staff will work closely with physiotherapists, occupational therapists and the moving and handling service to ensure that appropriate provision is established and tailored to the individual child’s needs.

• Parents/ Carers are informed of their child’s progress and learning targets at parent/ career meetings as and in their report. Additional meetings may also be arranged during the year in response to changing needs or updated advice from other professionals.

• Children’s attainment is tracked using the whole school tracking system ITrack and those failing to make expected progress are identified very quickly. These children are then discussed in termly pupil progress meetings that are undertaken between the SMT and teaching staff. Provision maps will identify additional action to increase the rate of progress and will be updated regularly in line with these pupil progress meetings.

• Where it is decided that additional or different provision is required to support increased rates of inclusion so that a pupil with SEND is able to access learning effectively, parents/carers will be informed and their partnership will be sought in order to improve progress and attainment through development of effective differentiated provision.

Action related to SEND support will follow an assess, plan, do and review model:

1) Assess: Data on the child held by the school will be collated by the class teacher and SENCO in order to make an accurate assessment of the child’s needs. Parents/carers will also be included in this discussion and pupils will be given the opportunity to express their own opinion as well. Together this will support the identification of actions required to improve outcomes.

2) Plan: If review of the action taken indicates that “additional to and different from” support will be

required, then the views of all involved, including the parents/carers and the child will be obtained and appropriate evidence based interventions identified, recorded and implemented by the teachers and TAs with advice from the SENCO.

3) Do: SEND support will be recorded on a provision map and where necessary an Early Years Inclusion request, Inclusion Panel request or EHC plan. It will identify a clear set of expected outcomes which will include relevant academic and developmental targets that take into account the views of the child as well as parents/carers aspirations for their child. Parents/carers and the child will also be consulted on the action they can take to support attainment of the desired outcomes. This will be recorded and a date made for reviewing attainment.

4) Review: Progress towards these outcomes will be tracked and reviewed termly with the parents/carers and their child. If progress rates do not increase, despite the delivery of high quality interventions, advice will always be sought from external agencies regarding strategies to best meet the needs of a child. This will only be undertaken after parent permission has been made and may include referral to:

1) Local Authority support services.

2) Specialists in other schools e.g. Teaching Schools, Special Schools

3) Social Care

4) Health partners i.e. Health Visitor, Speech & Language

NB for a very small percentage of children whose needs are significant and complex and the SEND support required to meet their needs cannot reasonably be provided from within the school’s own resources, a request will be made to the Local Authority to conduct and assessment of education, health and care needs. This may result in an EHC Plan being provided.

How will the curriculum be matched to each child’s needs.

• Teachers plan using pupils’ progress and attainment levels, differentiating tasks to ensure progress for every pupil in the classroom. The school's curriculum takes into account opportunities for both breadth and depth in learning, seeking to enable pupils to learn and build upon new skills and knowledge at a rate that is appropriate to them and their learning needs offering differentiation and support accordingly.
• When a pupil has been identified as having special educational needs, the curriculum and the learning environment will be further adapted by the class teacher to reduce barriers to learning and enable them to access the curriculum more easily.
• These adaptations may include strategies suggested by the SENCo and/or external specialists such as Speech and Language Therapists, Physiotherapists, the Educational Psychologist...
• In addition if it is considered appropriate, pupils may be provided with specialised equipment or resources and further adult support. All actions taken by the class teacher and SENCO will be shared with parents.

You can find out more about our school curriculum here: Learning | Riddings Infant and Nursery School (secure-primarysite.net)

You can also read about our achievement of the Inclusion Quality Mark (IQM) and their assessors findings about our school ethos and curriculum here: SEND/ Inclusion | Riddings Infant and Nursery School (secure-primarysite.net)

How will the school evaluate the effectiveness of the SEND provision made for pupils.

The effectiveness of SEND provision will be measured using qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data will gather the views of parents/carers and children on how successful the provision has been in enabling them to obtain their outcomes. Quantitative data will examine both progress and attainment levels using the school’s monitoring system. This data will also be compared to national data for pupils of the same level prior learning level. This data will be shared regularly with Governors through the Head Teacher’s report and be judged by external moderators including Ofsted.

Information will be gathered from a range of sources to support this ongoing evaluation and will include:

• Planning
• Assessment records
• Ongoing conversations between school staff and SMT/ the SENCO
• Records from well-being meetings and discussions with the family support worker.
• Feedback from termly pupil progress meetings
• Regularly updated provision maps which reflect the needs of each class or year group cohort and the provision in place to support them.

What training do the staff supporting children with SEND undertake?

We have received training from many of the agencies named above and through our ongoing professional relationships with these services we are able to plan for and support staff training in order to meet the needs of all pupils at Riddings Infant and Nursery School.

Staff training will be regularly reviewed so that it is appropriate for supporting staff in effectively meeting the needs of each cohort. Where new training needs are identified the school will work alongside Derbyshire County Council SEND team and the services referenced above to provide the appropriate training for staff as necessary.

Staff training has included Makaton, Every Child a Talker (ECAT), Every Child A Mover (ECAM), NELI (Nuffield Early Language Intervention), PECs (Picture Exchange system), positive play, hand massage, ELSA, Lego Therapy, Pro-ACT SKIP behaviour managements training, Attention Autism, Numicon and Cuisennaire training amongst others.

The SENCo has completed the National Senco Award and has a MA in Special Educational Needs.

The school staff have undertaken attachment aware training and are beginning the Autism Advocate training in the academic year 2023/24.

Please feel free to come into school to talk to us about any of the above.

What specialist services are available at the school?

The school has access to a range of specialist support; Educational Psychologist, specialist teachers, Health Visitor, Speech and Language Therapists as well as its own Family Support Worker, Pastoral Lead and Wellbeing Mentor. Where appropriate the school staff will undertake additional training accessed through these services in order to extend their skills and knowledge in relation to advice from other professionals.

Advice will be sought from external agencies regarding strategies to best meet the specific needs of a pupil. This will only be undertaken after parental permission has been obtained and may include referral to:

• Our Early Help Offer- you can find out more about this here: Family Wellbeing / School Early Help | Riddings Infant and Nursery School (secure-primarysite.net)
• The Family Support Worker and Wellbeing Mentor.
• Specialists in other schools e.g. teaching schools, special schools.
• Special Educational Needs Support Service
• Behaviour Support Service
• Autism Outreach Team
• Hearing Impairment team
• Visual Impairment team
• Educational Psychologist Service
• Educational Welfare Officers
• Physical and Disability Support Service
• Social Services
• School Nurse
• Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service