Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)

Aims and philosophy

We passionately believe in an inclusive education for all and are dedicated to providing a ‘whole school’ approach to raising achievement in line with the students’ starting point. This is very much who we are as an academy and as a community.

We are incredibly proud of the personal, social and academic achievements of our young people with Special Education Needs and Disabilities and are confident that through an inclusive learning environment and high quality learning experiences we help students go from Sancroft equipped to make the most of the next stage of their learning and to live ‘life in all its fullness’ (John 10:10).

We have high aspirations for our entire community and aim to create a learning environment which is flexible enough to meet the needs of all students in our community and supports them to make the best possible progress and achieve their full potential regardless of their individual needs. Our inclusive ethos aims to encourage all pupils to be actively involved in their own learning. This involves valuing all pupils and staff equally and supporting them in reducing barriers to learning and participation.

What is SEND?

As set out in the SEND Code of Practice 2015, a child or young person has a special educational need if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for them which is different from or additional to that normally available to pupils of the same age.

All mainstream schools (which includes maintained schools and academies) have a similar approach to meeting the needs of pupils with SEND and are supported by the Local Authority to ensure that all pupils, regardless of their specific needs, make the best possible progress in school. All schools are supported to be inclusive, with the needs of pupils with SEND being met in a mainstream setting wherever possible, where families want this to happen.

Additionally, schools have to provide details of the school-specific offer which should reflect the Norfolk SEND Local Offer.

The Local Offer has two key purposes:

To provide clear, comprehensive and accessible information about the provision available to support disabled children and children with SEN and their families. This easy-to-understand information will set out what is normally available in schools to help children with lower-level SEN as well as the options available to support families who need additional help to care for their child.
To make provision more responsive to local needs and aspirations by directly involving children and young people with SEND, parents/carers and service providers in its development and review.

As part of the Local Offer, all schools and county councils must publish on their website information about what support there is for children with SEND in the school and cluster.

Assess Plan Do Review – The 7Cs

At Sancroft, we use the ‘Assess, Plan, Do, Review’ cycle. We ensure that any additional needs that a student may have are identified early using the 7Cs learning portfolio and we offer a package of support to meet those requirements.

The 7 Cs Learning Portfolio helps to define barriers to learning and inform action. It provides a language of assessment that helps us all to consider ‘why’ a learner is having difficulties with the curriculum. It is not always enough to provide ‘more’ maths if a learner is finding maths difficult. We may need to support their language, memory or processing. The 7 Cs Learning Portfolio gives us a language to do this.

In our school we are using the 7 Cs Learning Portfolio to help identify pupil strengths and barriers to learning. The 7 Cs Learning Portfolio provides a language of assessment that we can all use.

The 7 Cs Learning Portfolio includes the curriculum as one of the ‘Cs’ but also defines 6 extra ‘Cs’ that are essential for learning. Within each ‘C’ there are 7 skills. We can talk about each skill and together agree strengths and areas for development. This will help us plan next steps.

Together with your child, we will identify 3 strengths and 3 areas for development. We also have a Progress Tracker that we can use to identify ‘starting points’ and capture improvements.

For more information on the 7Cs please refer to the following links: Coming soon.

We aim to:

Ensure that the academy’s statutory duties are met for students that have an Education Health and Care Plan.
Ensure that students are enabled to become independent, resourceful and resilient learners.
Ensure every child achieves their potential regardless of their barriers to learning or starting point.
Ensure there are strong links with parents and families in regard to supporting their child
Ensure that the views of individual students are considered when determining the nature of provision required to support them.
Ensure all advice from professionals is integrated into planning and provision.
Ensure we use the data and progress of students to inform planning and provision.