By Emma Gorton, Year 4 Class Teacher, SENDCO & Specialist Leader in Education for SEND.
MICKLEHURST All Saints Primary School is proud to have added to its growing number of national awards and accreditations.
The school has now been awarded the National SEND Inclusion Award (SENDIA) in recognition of the high-quality education it provides for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities.
The award focuses on removing barriers to learning through early identification of SEND, inclusive teaching and leadership, and helps schools to evaluate impact to improve classroom practice and pupil outcomes.
We applied for the SEND Inclusion Award as we felt it was a robust way of celebrating our successes, improving outcomes for our children, and rewarding the hard work of students, parents, and staff with regards to the provision for SEND students.
We knew our provision already encouraged students with SEND to be successful and make good progress. However, our ethos encourages reflective practice so we wanted to ensure our provision was continuously improving and adapting especially after the disruption caused by Covid.
To achieve the award, we had to provide evidence we had met standards in a range of areas, including ensuring effective teaching and learning for SEND pupils, effective leadership and management of SEND provision, and the involvement of pupils and parents in decisions about SEND provision and support.
Through discussions with the Headteacher, myself, staff, parents, Chair of Governors and pupils, the assessor found substantial evidence of the positive impact of the school’s focus on providing an inclusive, supportive and effective approach to meet the needs of SEND pupils.
We provided evidence of excellent teamwork, clear pupil progress monitoring, tracked interventions to ensure impact and use of individual ‘pupil passports’ for every child with special needs.
We have worked hard to focus on training of staff, increasing the pupil voice and on-going self-assessment to ensure that provision is informed. We also ensure parents are well-informed of their child’s needs, the support they receive from teaching staff and the Pastoral Manager and the progress they make.
The SENDIA evaluations and other feedback showed pupils and parents to be very positive about their SEND experience. Parents described our school as “fantastic”, as providing “brilliant support” and having continued involvement with children’s transition into high school.
We are fortunate and proud to have a very supportive and experienced Governing Body and a very effective Parent Champion (Lindsey Tweed) who runs a Facebook parent support group.
Lindsey also provides invaluable personalised support to parents of SEND children as well as assisting in sign posting parents to other local support groups and networks.
The SENDIA award has been a useful framework to celebrate success and identify the next steps at Micklehurst All Saints. There has been an increased focus on obtaining stakeholders perspectives to further inform change and an increased team approach to delivering the graduated SEND approach.
Miss Trelfa, Headteacher, said she was incredibly proud to be awarded SENDIA as it reinforced the schools inclusive ethos where every child is unique and valued, which was one of the key findings of the Ofsted inspection in March 2018 which stated: “Together leaders, governors and staff have created a haven where pupils thrive.”
We plan to act on the recommendations of the award to further develop our SEND provision, continue to remove barriers to learning and provide the highest quality teaching and learning experiences for all pupils.
We will also continue to prioritise the pupil and parent voice at Micklehurst All Saints Primary and plan to share our successes and expertise with other schools in the Mossley and Carrbrook schools partnership.