SEND FAQs: Education

Step one

You should speak to the staff at school who are involved with your child, to see if they can help to resolve your concerns:

  • class teacher
  • SENCo
  • head teacher

Step two

If you have spoken to all of these people and you do not feel that your concerns have been resolved, you should follow the school complaints policy. You should find a copy of this on the school website. You should also find other policies and documents that may be useful to support your conversations with the school. For example:

  • teaching and learning policy
  • bullying policy
  • behaviour policy
  • SEND policy
  • SEND Information report

Step three

You should consult the Swindon core standards for SEND. This should help you understand what SEND support and provision should be in place for your child. The core standards can be used to support conversations with the school about the identification of SEND and supporting a child or young person with different needs.

Step four

If your child has an education, health and care (EHC) plan, you should use this to support conversations with the school around needs, provision that should be in place and outcomes that all involved with your child should be working towards achieving.

Step five

Reach out to SIAS, which is a free information and advice service for parents and carers of children with SEND.

Step six

If your child has an EHC plan and you have significant concerns about the provision that is in place for them or you are worried that the placement is not working for them, you should speak to the SENCo and ask them to hold an interim review meeting.

Ask for any professionals involved with your child whose attendance you feel would be helpful to be invited to this meeting or asked to provide a report.

The interim review meeting is important because the SEND service is unable to make changes to funding or placement without receiving the paperwork from an annual or interim review of a pupil’s EHC plan.

The Swindon core standards for SEND shows what a model graduated response should look like.

The core standards follow the Assess – Plan – Do – Review approach, as outlined in the code of practice.

The core standards for SEND cover:

  • universal provision (Quality First Teaching and reasonable adjustments) to support children with barriers to learning
  • gaining the pupil and parent/carer voice
  • identification of SEND in each area of need
  • provision for SEND in each area of need
  • identification of high needs
  • whole school good practice for SEND
  • guidance for applying for an EHC Statutory Needs Assessment
  • guidance for holding an annual review

The Swindon Core Standards for SEND outline what the local authority expects from all education settings in Swindon in relation to the identification of and provision for children and young people with SEND

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