Inclusion & SEND

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At Bayards Hill Primary School, we value the needs and achievements of every pupil and strive to provide a broad curriculum which allows all pupils to learn and progress.

A child has special educational needs if he or she has learning difficulties that call for special educational provision to be made.

A child has learning difficulties if he or she:

Has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of the same age.
Has a disability which prevents or hinders the child from making use of educational facilities of a kind provided for children of the same age in other schools within the Local Authority. (Taken from section 20 of the Children and Families Act 2014).

The progress of all pupils is tracked throughout the school's assessment data within Target Tracker. For pupils with SEND we regularly review progress towards the agreed outcomes and SEND descriptors as well as additional assessments in Reading (Salford assessment) and Maths (Basic Number Screener).

If you have concerns around your child’s progress at school, the first person to speak to is your child’s class teacher. If you still have ongoing concerns and would like to discuss your child’s special educational needs, you may wish to speak to a member of the Inclusion & SEND team.

Meet the team

Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCo)

Mrs L Lemon - responsible for the day-to-day implementation of the school's SEND strategy, policy, provision and school offer. She supports teachers, the leadership team, pupils and their families, and liaises with external agencies when required. Mrs Lemon provides advice, guidance, and training to staff on supporting pupils with SEND and will support teachers to develop individualised support plans for pupils with additional needs.

Pastoral Leads

Mrs A Flanagan & Miss J Armstrong - supports pupils, parents, and their families, building and maintaining positive relationships between home and school. Mrs Flanagan & Miss Armstrong can support with a range of issues, including attendance, punctuality, bereavements, separation and many more. They work with families to support them when other outside agencies are involved.

Specialist Teaching Assistant - Speech & Language

Mrs N White - works with pupils across the school to enable them to develop maximum understanding and communicate with those around them. Mrs White delivers targeted speech & language interventions and puts in place appropriate strategies to ensure pupils make progress within this aspect of SEND.

Specialist Teaching Assistant - Behaviour & Interventions

Mrs J Ram - works with pupils across the school that need support with Social, Emotional and Mental Health needs. This includes 1:1 and small group interventions for check ins, mentoring, Lego-based Therapy, Drawing & Talking and Social Stories. In addition, Mrs Ram is completing her training to be able to run ELSA sessions from September 2022.

How do we identify & assess pupils with SEND?

SEND provision is additional to and different to what is provided as part of Bayards Hill's inclusive, broad and balanced curriculum.

When a child is identified as needing SEN Support, Bayards Hill employs a graduated approach of Assess-Plan-Do-Review adopting the recommended model for special needs set out in the SEND Code of Practice (DfE 2015). The local authority SEND guidance is used as a guide for the identification, assessment and provision for SEND, and the forms provided are used for record-keeping. A register of pupils with SEND is kept as a legal requirement.
Identifying an SEND may be due to parental concern, low entry profile, lack of progress despite receiving a differentiated curriculum, low achievement, requiring greater attention in class due to behavioural or learning difficulties, or requiring specialist material or equipment or support for sensory/physical problems.
Children’s progress is assessed regularly by staff as part of the school tracking process. If progress is slow, speaking with parents and ensuring high quality targeted teaching is in place is the first step, accompanied by in-class interventions. If, after monitoring, there is still a concern the SENCo will work with the class teacher and phase leader to decide whether the child requires specialist provision using the Oxfordshire County Council Guidance. If specialist advice or support is deemed necessary, this will be organised by the SEND team
In partnership with parents and carers and the child, our teachers will create a Pupil Profile, identifying desired outcomes and actions. These actions may include different teaching approaches, appropriate equipment, strategies within class and at home, as well as interventions to support the child’s progress.
Outcomes and actions are reviewed regularly during the SEND Review Meetings, which are held with parents or carers and class teachers 3 times a year.

Our school uses Oxfordshire County Council’s guidance “Identifying and supporting Special Educational Needs in Oxfordshire schools and settings”.

The guidance sets out:

How we identify if a child or young person has a special educational need.
How we assess children and plan for their special educational needs, and how we adapt our teaching.
Ways in which we can adapt our school environment to meet each child’s needs.
How we review progress and agree outcomes and involve you and your child in this.

You can find the guidance for EYFS here and Primary here.

The School Offer

We welcome and provide for pupils with a range of educational needs, including those with:

Communication and interaction- speech, language and communication needs, Autistic Spectrum Disorder including Aspergers and Autism.

Cognition and learning- moderate non-specific learning difficulties, and specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or dyscalculia.

Social, emotional and mental health difficulties- behaviour reflecting underlying mental health or emotional difficulties, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, attachment disorder.

Sensory and/or physical needs- hearing , visual or multi-sensory impairments or physical disability.

There are varying levels of provision on offer at Bayards Hill Primary School, which covers universal provision, for all pupils, and additionally our targeted and specialist provision.

We are able to offer a wide range of professional expertise in Special Educational Needs, from our own school staff and also through consultants who work within our school:

Our Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator holds the National SENCo qualification with Oxford Brookes University
We have staff who have enhanced training in a number of interventions for the different areas of SEND.
Teaching assistants are trained to support the particular needs of the children they work with. We also have the support from our OXSIT Inclusion Consultant.

We have close and effective links with a range of advisory agencies to support us in addressing children’s needs. These include:

Educational Psychologists
Communication and Interaction Support Service
Autism Advisory Service
Speech and Language Therapist
Language and Communication Advisory Teacher
Community Staff Nurse
Paediatric Occupational Therapist
Children’s Services
Primary Care and Mental Health Services (CAMHS)
Special Educational Needs Advisory Service

Information about these services and what they offer can be found on the Oxfordshire County Council SEND webpages.

The success of the school’s SEND provision is evaluated through:

Monitoring of classroom practice by SENCO and other members of the Senior Leadership Team.
Analysis of pupil tracking data and test results for individuals and pupil groups
Monitoring of procedures and practice by the SEN governor regularly
Monitoring of the quality of Pupil Profiles and review meetings
School self-evaluation and the School Improvement Plan
When we run special intervention programmes for groups of children we assess how successful they have been and use that information to decide on how best to run them in the future.

The Local Offer

The Code of Practice for SEN and Disability (2014) set out guidance on how the needs of children and young people with SEN or disability should be met. More information about how this is carried out within Oxfordshire can be found on the council website at https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/introduction-send-and-local-offer

The Local Offer for Oxfordshire can be found at https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/special-educational-needs-and-disability-local-offer

SEN Support & EHCPs

SEN Support

SEN Support is also known as a K code. This means a special educational need or disability has been identified, and support is given to the teachers from the SENCo and any outside agency involved to ensure pupils reach their full potential.

The following flow chart have been developed by Special Needs Jungle to explain in detail the process of SEN Support.

Education and Health Care Plans

EHCPs are for pupils who need more support than what is available through SEN Support. It is a legal document thats sets out the special educational needs of a child or young person with SEND and the provisions that should be put in place. The local authority is responsible for ensuring those provisions are carried out. Most children or young people with SEND will not need an EHC plan

For more information about the process of applying for an EHCP within Oxfordshire, please follow the link below:

https://vimeo.com/105132372

The following flow chart have been developed by Special Needs Jungle to explain in detail the process of requesting an EHCP and the EHCP process once an application has been submitted.

Mental Health Support Team (MHST)

The Mental Health Support Team (MHST) complement the support provided at Windmill by sharing expertise and resources for children that may benefit from accessing early support. This intervention may be delivered to individuals who do not typically meet the thresholds for the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).

MHSTs work by bringing together education and mental health professionals with children and their families to develop a consistent and effective approach to support mental health.

If you feel that your child may benefit from some early intervention around their mental health, or if you would like some more information, please contact the SENCo.