What are Special Educational Needs (SEN) or a disability?

Special Educational Needs:

‘A child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her.

A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty or disability if he or she:

• has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age, or
• has a disability which prevents or hinders him or her from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions.

For children aged two or more, special educational provision is educational or training provision that is additional to or different from that made generally for other children or young people of the same age by mainstream schools, maintained nursery schools, mainstream post-16 institutions or by relevant early years providers. For a child under two years of age, special educational provision means educational provision of any kind’ (Code of Practice, 2015, p16).

Disability:

‘Many children and young people who have SEN may have a disability under the Equality Act 2010 – that is ‘…a physical or mental impairment which has a long-term and substantial adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities’. This definition provides a relatively low threshold and includes more children than many realise: ‘long-term’ is defined as ‘a year or more’ and ‘substantial’ is defined as ‘more than minor or trivial’. This definition includes sensory impairments such as those affecting sight or hearing, and long-term health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, and cancer. Children and young people with such conditions do not necessarily have SEN, but there is a significant overlap between disabled children and young people and those with SEN. Where a disabled child or young person requires special educational provision they will also be covered by the SEN definition’ (Code of Practice, 2015, p16).

At Riddings Infant and Nursery we recognise that all children with SEN have different needs and our Equality and Diversity Policy states that

‘We will have due regard to advancing equality of opportunity including making serious consideration of the need to remove or minimise disadvantages suffered by persons who share a relevant protected characteristic that are connected to that characteristic; to meet the needs of persons who share a protected characteristic that are different from the needs of persons who do not share it; encourage persons who share a relevant protected characteristic to participate in public life or in any activity in which participation by such persons is disproportionately low.’

You can read the policy here: https://www.riddingsinfantandnursery.co.uk/policies/