SEND IASS - Special Educational Needs (SEN) support factsheet

All teachers should regularly check whether their pupils are making progress. If they think your child is finding it harder than others to make progress, they should consider whether they might have SEN or need additional or different support from the others in the class. The school must talk to you and your child about this and involve you in decisions before they start giving/reducing/removing extra or different support to your child. If a young person is 16 or older, the school should involve them directly.

A child with challenging/disruptive behaviour can be an indication of unmet needs. Their school should try to identify these and intervene early to avoid escalation leading to exclusions and missing out on education. This early intervention should include consideration of assessment from multi-agency professionals to determine whether the appropriate provision is in place for that child.

Sometimes you may be the first to be aware that your child has SEN. If you think your child may need SEN Support, you should talk to your child's teacher or to the school's Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO). Every school must have a qualified SENCO. They have day to day responsibility for how children with SEN are supported within a school and co-ordinate the specific provision for individual pupils.

What is SEN support?

Children with SEN should be given support with their learning to help them make progress. The support they are given is called SEN Support and is defined as 'help that is additional to or different from the support generally given to most of the other children of the same age.' This is a type of SEP that schools arrange from their own resources. Schools are legally required to publish details of their SEN provision. This is in the form of a SEN information report.

Health care and Social care provision that educates or trains a child is also considered to be SEP. If a school cannot meet the child's needs from their own resources, the other way that SEP can be obtained is through an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) which is secured by the Local Authority (LA).

What must the education setting do?

Schools have a legal duty to identify and address the SEN of all pupils and use their "best endeavours" to make sure that any child with SEN gets the support they need - this means doing everything they can to meet the pupil's SEN. They must also make "reasonable adjustments" to support a disabled child in accessing education.

Schools use a guidance document on SEN Support from their LA to help them decide whether and what type of support your child needs. This helps to make sure that all schools and settings in a LA's area have a clear and consistent approach to identifying when a child or young person has SEN, and how to support them to achieve good outcomes, including what schools are expected to put in place from the funding that they receive. This guidance aims to be helpful in looking at the individual needs of each child and suggesting a range of approaches to meet their particular needs. Checklists may be included which are intended to help identify a child's level of need. There is no legal requirement to meet a specific number of criterion to access SEN Support.

The SEND Code of Practice (The Code) is statutory guidance that informs schools and organisations on how to put SEND law from the Children and Families Act 2014 into practice. This highlights what they 'must' do and what they 'should' do. The 'musts' are compulsory and 'should' means that they have to consider following the guidance and if they don't, they have a good reason for not doing so.