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SEND - How do we know if your child needs extra help?

1. We get information from the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) of your child’s Primary School or previous school.

2. We get information from the Local Authority if your child has a current Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

3. We may get information from external agencies, such as Speech & Language Therapists, Educational Psychologists, Audiologists and Specialist Teacher Advisors, GPs and paediatricians.

4. We receive your child’s Key Stage 2 results.

5. We carry out standardised tests of all our pupils on entry to the school. This includes Cognitive Ability Tests (CAT), reading and spelling assessments.

6. We check that your child is making the expected progress based on assessments and monitoring by subject teachers over the course of time.

7. We take account of your views about how you feel your child is progressing in school. Parents contact the school with new information which will impact upon the education of their child.

It is the role of the SENCo (Mrs Sian Cosgrove) to gather this information, identify your child’s individual barriers to learning and coordinate the available support strategies to minimise those barriers. This may involve some additional testing where necessary or liaison with external agencies where appropriate.

We currently make use of

  • WRAT (Wide-Ranging Assessment Test)
  • DASH (Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting)
  • BPVS (British Picture Vocabulary Scale)
  • YARC (York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension)
  • MALS (myself as a learner scale)
  • Boxall Profile (assessment for those with emotional and social difficulties)
  • PhAB (phonological assessment battery)
  • TROG (Testing Reception of Grammar)
  • ACE (Assessment of Comprehension and Expression)
  • Dyslexia Portfolio
  • CTOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing)
  • Literacy Assessment Online
  • NGRT reading assessment
  • NGST spelling assessment

In addition, for our hearing-impaired pupils, we use

  • Speech discrimination tests (a variety depending upon need)
  • STASS (South Tyneside Assessment of Syntactic Structure)
  • Speech perception tests (a variety)
  • HARPA (Hearing and Age-Related Phonological Analysis)

We will inform you of any additional test results and arrange a meeting with the SENCo to discuss the implications of those results if necessary.

If the results indicate that additional, outside support, would be helpful, then we will firstly inform you and ask for your consent to share the information with the relevant agencies. These may be Specialist Teacher Advisors, Educational Psychologists, Audiologists, etc.

Meetings with outside agencies may take place in school, at home or at their place of work.

The additional support from outside agencies includes more detailed assessments of your child’s specific needs and we will then work closely with these agencies to ensure that their advice and guidance is followed.

If you are concerned about your child’s needs please contact the school and ask to speak to the SENCo who will arrange a meeting to discuss your concern.

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