Special Education Needs
SEND Information Report 2024-2025
The kinds of SEND that are provided for at Co-op Academy Penny Oaks.
Our academy currently provides additional and/or different provision for a range of needs, including:
- Communication and interaction, for example, autistic spectrum disorder and speech and language difficulties
- Cognition and learning, for example, dyslexia, moderate, learning difficulties, development delay
- Social, emotional and mental health difficulties, for example, behaviour difficulties
- Sensory and/or physical needs, for example, visual impairments, hearing impairments
Who are the best people to talk to in this academy about a child’s difficulties with learning/Special Educational Needs or disability (SEND)?
Class Teacher
- Checking on the progress of a child and identifying, planning and delivering any additional help they may need (this could be things like targeted work, additional support) and letting the SENDCo know as necessary.
- Writing Individual Provision Plans and sharing and reviewing these with parents at least once each term and planning for the next term.
- Ensuring that all staff working with a particular child in our academy are helped to deliver the planned work/programme for the child, so they can achieve the best possible progress. This may involve the use of additional adults, outside specialist help and specially planned work and resources, as well as differentiated quality first teaching.
- Ensuring that the academy’s SEND Policy is followed in their classroom and for all the pupils they teach with any SEND.
The SENDCo - Louise Haywood
Responsible for:
- Coordinating all the support for children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and developing the academy’s SEND Policy and action plans to make sure all children get a consistent, high quality response to meeting their needs in our academy. This includes developing and monitoring the academy's graduated response of support for our SEND pupils and supporting the assessment of progress and impact.
- Ensuring the changes under the SEND Code of Practice 2014 are implemented in line with the academy's SEND Action Plan.
- Ensuring that parents are:
- involved in supporting their child’s learning
- kept informed about the support their child is getting
- involved in reviewing how they are doing
- Liaising with all the other people who may be coming into our academy to help support a child’s learning, e.g. Speech and Language Therapy, Educational Psychology etc…
- Updating the academy’s SEND register (a system for ensuring all the SEND needs of pupils in this school are known) and making sure that there are excellent records of the child’s progress and needs.
- Providing specialist support for teachers and support staff in the school so they can help children with SEND in the academy achieve the best progress possible.
- To evaluate, in conjunction with all relevant stakeholders, the effectiveness of the academy's SEND provision.
- Coordinating Learning Support Assistants and Teaching Assistants to ensure the best support is given to the children on the SEND register and those with Education, Health and Care Plans.
Headteacher
Responsible for:
- The day to day management of all aspects of the academy. This includes support for children with SEND
- Giving responsibility to the SENDCO and class teachers but is still responsible for ensuring that your child’s needs are met.
- Making sure that the Governing Body is kept up to date about any issues in the academy relating to SEND.
- Support the academy SENDCO in terms of budgeting the SEND provisions.
SEND Governor - Tazeem Akhtar
Responsible for:
- Making sure that the necessary support is made for any child who attends the academy who has SEND.
- Challenging the academy's SEND department to ensure ALL children are reaching their full potential.
Identifying pupils with SEND and assessing their needs.
We will assess each pupil’s current skills and levels of attainment on entry, which will build on previous settings and Key Stages, where appropriate. Class teachers will make regular assessments of progress for all pupils and identify those whose progress:
- Is significantly slower than that of their peers starting from the same baseline
- Fails to match or better the child’s previous rate of progress
- Fails to close the attainment gap between the child and their peers
- Widens the attainment gap
This may include progress in areas other than attainment, for example, social needs. These points will be discussed informally with the SENDCo and also formally during half termly pupil progress meetings.
Slow progress and low attainment will not automatically mean a pupil is recorded as having SEND.
When deciding whether special educational provision is required, we will start with the desired outcomes, including the expected progress and attainment, and the views and the wishes of the pupil and their parents. We will use this to determine the support that is needed and whether we can provide it by adapting our core offer, or whether something different or additional is needed.
Consulting and involving pupils and parents
Partnership with parents plays a key role in enabling children and young people with SEND to achieve their potential. The academy recognises that parents hold key information and have knowledge and experience to contribute to the shared view of a child’s needs and the best ways of supporting them. All parents of children with special educational needs will be treated as partners and supported to play an active and valued role in their children’s education.
What support do we have as parents of a child with SEND?
We will have an early discussion with the pupil and their parents (usually via the class teacher) when identifying whether they need special educational provision. We will make sure that:
- The class teacher is available to discuss your child’s progress or any concerns you may have to share information about what is working well at home and academy so similar strategies can be used.
- Everyone develops a good understanding of the pupil’s areas of strength and difficulty
- We take into account the parents’ concerns
- Everyone understands the agreed outcomes sought for the child
- Everyone is clear on what the next steps are
- The SENDCo is available to meet with you to discuss your child’s progress or any concerns/worries you may have.
- All information from outside professionals will be discussed with you and with the person involved directly, or where this is not possible, in a report.
- Provision plans will be reviewed with your involvement each term as appropriate.
- Bradford SENDIASS (01274 513300) is one organisation available to support parents.
We will formally notify parents when it is decided that a pupil will receive SEND support.
Children and young people with special educational needs often have a unique knowledge of their own needs and their views about what sort of help they would like to help them make the most of their education will be ascertained where possible. They will be encouraged to participate in all the decision-making processes and contribute to the assessment of their needs, the review and transition processes.
Assessing and reviewing pupils' progress towards outcomes
We will follow the graduated approach and the four-part cycle of assess, plan, do, review. The class teacher will work with the SENDCo to carry out a clear analysis of the pupil’s needs. This will draw on:
- The teacher’s assessment and experience of the pupil
- Their previous progress and attainment and behaviour
- Other teachers’ assessments, where relevant
- The individual’s development in comparison to their peers and national data
- The views and experience of parents
- The pupil’s own views
- Advice from external support services, if relevant
To obtain further understanding of a child’s learning difficulties we may use:
- Salford Sentence Reading and Comprehension test
- IDL Dyslexia Screening Test
- WellComm Speech and Language toolkit
- The Bradford Baseline Assessment tools
The assessment will be reviewed regularly.
When SEND is identified and a child has been placed on the SEND Register, a Pupil Passport will be created with the involvement of the child, parents/carers and school staff. This will include:
- Short term outcomes / targets
- Teaching strategies to be used
- Provision to be put in place
- We will also ask for the involvement of external agencies when required.
These will be reviewed by all involved, termly or earlier if deemed necessary.
All teachers and support staff who work with the pupil will be made aware of their needs, the outcomes sought, the support provided, and any teaching strategies or approaches that are required. We will regularly review the effectiveness of the support and interventions and their impact on the pupil’s progress.
Supporting pupils moving between year groups, schools and settings
In our Early Years setting, home visits are carried out before children start in our Nursery and Reception (if the child has not been in our Nursery setting). Sessions are booked in for parents and children to experience parts of the the school day, such as lunch times and choosing meals, P.E sessions getting changed.
For all the children in school, transition mornings take place every year during the Summer term, which enables all classes to move to their next teacher and classroom.
To enable children with SEND to have a successful transition within school between classes transition booklets are provided. These support the child with the help of an adult to find out lots of information about their new class before they take part in transition morning. For children in Year 6 a specific transition booklet is provided which they are supported by an adult to complete. Some of the information can be found before their transition days and some can be completed once they have visited their new school. Meetings with parents, staff from the secondary school and the child are held so that everyone knows how best to support the children when moving to a new setting.
We will share information with the school/academy or other setting the pupil is moving to.
If a child requires extra transition support, the SENDCO will liaise with other relevant professionals such as the SENDCO attached to the receiving school/academy, in order to ensure a smooth transition takes place. Extra visits may be available and if they are, they will be arranged in consultation with parents and the child.
If a child moves to a new school/academy, we pass on all SEND records to the new setting.
Our approach to teaching pupils with SEND
Teachers are responsible and accountable for the progress and development of all the pupils in their class.
High quality teaching is our first step in responding to pupils who have SEND. This will be differentiated for individual pupils.
We will also provide interventions when appropriate the following are examples:
- Elklan (speech and language)
- Wellcom (Speech and Language)
- Neli
- IDL (Reading and spelling support)
- Clicker
- PECs
- Colour Coding (Speech and Language)
- Colourful Semantics
- See and Learn
Adaptations to the curriculum and learning environment
We make the following adaptations to ensure all pupils’ needs are met:
- Differentiating our curriculum to ensure all pupils are able to access it, for example, by grouping, 1:1 work, teaching style, content of the lesson, etc.
- Adapting our resources and staffing
- Using recommended aids, such as laptops, coloured overlays, visual timetables, larger fonts, etc.
- Differentiating our teaching, for example, giving longer processing times, pre-teaching of key vocabulary, reading instructions aloud, etc.
Additional support for learning
We have a number of teaching assistants who are trained to deliver interventions, such as Neli, Wellcomm and Colour Coding.
Teaching assistants can support pupils on a 1:1 basis and in small groups under the direction of the class teacher.
We work with the following outreach agencies to provide support for pupils with SEND:
- Bradford Autism Support Team
- Bradford School Nursing Team
- Bradford SCIL Team
- Bradford Education Psychology Service
- CAMHS
- Health Services as appropriate
- Early Years Intervention Services
- Bradford Pre-5s SEND Team
- Bradford 0-25 Inclusive Education Service
- SENDIASS
Expertise and training of staff
Updates on SEND issues are delivered in staff briefings / meetings lead by the SENDCo. All staff are encouraged to undertake relevant training in order to maintain and develop first-quality teaching and provision. Where a specific need is identified, training is provided. Staff induction includes SEND provision and practice within our academy and discussing the needs of individual pupils.
The academy’s SENDCo regularly attends SENDCo Network meetings to keep up to date with local and national developments in SEND.
Our SENDCO - Louise Haywood - has over 11 years experience in this role. She has been working in education for 26 years and is currently the Deputy Headteacher for the academy.
We have a team of teaching assistants, including higher level teaching assistants (HLTAs) who deliver SEND provision.
In the last academic year, all staff have been trained in Autism. We also have a learning mentor, whose role is to provide pupils with strategies to deal with their social and emotional issues as well as to react to situations as they arise.
Securing equipment and facilities
Specialist equipment for supporting children with additional needs are precured / ordered via the schools SEND budget on an individual basis.
Enabling pupils with SEND to engage in activities available to those in the school who do not have SEND
All of our extracurricular activities and school visits are available to all our pupils, including our breakfast club and after-school clubs.
All pupils are encouraged to go on our residential trip. If there is a concern for safety, this will be assessed on an individual basis. All steps will be taken to make reasonable adjustments where ever possible. This may include day visits, parents being invited to accompany children and additional 1:1 support where feasible.
All pupils are encouraged to take part in sports day/school plays/special workshops, etc.
All teaching and learning support staff have a responsibility to ensure that each child is given every opportunity to fulfil their potential within the normal classroom situation. All staff should be aware of the learning support needs of all children they teach and should ensure that the needs of each child is addressed.
How will Co-op Academy Penny Oaks support my child's social and emotional wellbeing?
At Co-op Academy Penny Oaks we focus on our school values under the 4 Co-op Ways of Being: Do What Matters Most (Collaboration, Forgiveness, Self-control), Be Yourself Always (Honesty, Confidence, Determination), Show You Care (Respect, Generosity, Kindness) and Succeed Together (Resourcefulness, Reflection, Resilience).
All children have access to high quality lessons designed to build and strengthen the children's social and emotional skills. Where children are struggling with their social, emotional development, staff would raise concerns to the SENDCo and the SENDCo will in conjunction with the Learning Mentor, talk to the child, parents and key adults to agree on the next steps needed.
Evaluating the effectiveness of SEND provision
The Governors will review this policy every two years. The SENDCo will carry out regular monitoring and evaluation in consultation with staff, parents and children as to the effectiveness of the policy. The SENDCo will report on SEND issues to the SEND named Governor Mrs Tazeem Akhtar so that information can be passed on to the full Governing Body.
We also evaluate the effectiveness of provision for pupils with SEND by:
- Reviewing pupils’ individual progress towards their goals each term
- Reviewing the impact of interventions
- Using pupil questionnaires where appropriate
- Monitoring by the SENDCo
- Holding annual reviews for pupils with EHC plans.
- Holding termly reviews for pupils with My Support Plans
Enabling pupils with SEND to engage in activities available to those in the school who do not have SEND
All of our extra-curricular activities and school visits are available to all our pupils, including our breakfast club and after-school clubs.
All pupils are encouraged to go on our residential trip. If there is a concern for safety this will be assessed on an individual basis. All steps will be taken to make reasonable adjustments where ever possible. This may include day visits, parents being invited to accompany children and additional 1:1 support where feasible.
All pupils are encouraged to take part in sports day/school plays/special workshops, etc.
Working with other agencies
Bradford's local offer can be found here : https://localoffer.bradford.gov.uk/
The local authority provides guidance to schools on how to meet children’s individual needs and further information on this and how schools measure this need can be found here:
https://bso.bradford.gov.uk/Schools/CMSPage.aspx?mid=3465
This document states the descriptors for each range of need and the provision available at school with SEND.
Complaints about SEND provision
Complaints about SEND provision in our academy should be made to the class teacher in the first instance. Parents will then be referred to the academy’s complaints policy.
The parents of pupils with disabilities have the right to make disability discrimination claims to the first-tier SEND tribunal if they believe that our academy has discriminated against their children. They can make a claim about alleged discrimination regarding:
- Exclusions
- Provision of education and associated services
- Making reasonable adjustments, including the provision of auxiliary aids and services
Contact details of support services for parents of pupils with SEND
- The Bradford SENDIASS provides Information, Advice and Support around Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). Support is provided on a range of topics, including provision in schools, assessment processes, conversion of statements to Education, Health and Care Plans, reviews, transitions, exclusions, transport, specialist provision/support services, appeals, local policies, Special Educational Needs code of practice. Support may be provided on a 1-1 or group basis according to need.
Telephone: 01274 513300
Address: 40-42 Listerhills Science Park, Bradford,
BD7 1HR Email: Bradfordsendiass@barnardos.org.uk
The local authority local offer
Our local authority’s local offer is published here: