Boosting Early Communication Skills: £6.5 million for Councils to Run Projects In order to provide to families with children who would benefit from additional help, with their early speech and communication skills access to family reading sessions, local parenting pop-ups and improved training for early years professionals, will be provided as part of a £6.5 million investment. Read More

Statements of Special Educational Needs (SEN) Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans in England. The following link will take you to statistics and analysis of statements of Special Educational Needs and Education and Health Care plans in England. This now includes local and national authority tables: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2018#history

School Governance Handbook and Schools’s Competency Framework This guidance which contains information on the roles and duties of governing boards and advice on the skills, knowledge and behaviours they need to be effective has been updated and published. The ‘Governance Handbook’ describes:

• The main features of effective governance.
• The roles and functions of governing boards.
• The legal duties of governing boards.
• Where they can source support.

Section 6.4.11(from page 69) covers the legal duties of governing bodies/trustees in relation to SEND. The following link will take you to this document: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/788234/governance_handbook_2019.pdf

The Multiplication Tables Check In June 2020 schools will be required to use a digital check to test year four pupils on their fluent recall of multiplication tables up to twelve. This will be achieved through a digital test containing twenty-five questions which should take around five minutes. An information video is available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhAJMJUsAac Read More

The SENCO Forum The SENCO Forum which provides an essential platform for fellow SENCO’s to network, seek professional support, advice, information, share opinions and ideas fro each other has now moved to the SEND Gateway. Should you wish to Subscribe visit: https://www.sendgateway.org.uk/  and click on the link for SENCO Forum

£31.6 Million is announced to train more Educational Psychologists. Plans have been outlined by the Department for Education to offer support for more young people with additional educational needs. The multi-million-pound fund will see over 600 Educational Psychologist trainees receive free tuition and grants. This announcement was accompanied by the publication of the educational psychologist workforce research which sets out the distribution and demographic profile of local authority educational psychologists in England. This research also provides evidence on factors affecting shortages of trainee and qualified educational psychologists in some local authorities: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-psychologist-workforce-research

Continued Professional Development NASEN live – 12^th July at the Vox Conference Centre, Birmingham A One day event that gives you the opportunity to network with other SEND professionals, explore latest SEND developments and update your knowledge, as well as hear from a group of key figures from within the sector and meet with a range of award winning exhibitors. £149, NASEN Gold Members go free. The Autism Show 14^th– 15^th June – ExCeL, London 21-22^nd June – NEC, Birmingham 28 – 29^th June – EventCity, Manchester The national event for autism, in association with the National Autism Society.

Supporting an Effective Transition for Learners with SEND This term is all about beginnings and endings as we prepare our students for their next year group, key stage or the road ahead on their life journey. It’s also about preparing for your new students. Read More

Supporting Pupils with Physical Difficulties  pdnet is a free to join, national network that provides professionals in education with support in promoting positive outcomes for children and young people with physical disability. www.pdent.org.uk As a result of securing funding from the Department for Education pdnet have produced a standards document aimed at providing a practical structure for schools and settings to self-evaluate current provision and reflect on the effectiveness of their organisation in meeting the diverse needs of children and young people with physical disability. Standards are provided for Early Years, Schools and Post-16 settings/phases. Four key areas identify the knowledge, skills, actions and attitudes needed to successfully support and nurture a learner with a physical disability that cover:

• Vision, ambition and expectation,
• Identifying and assessing need,
• Meeting diverse need,
• Enabling individual outcomes.

A self-evaluation tool has been developed to support schools in evaluating your school’s performance against the pdnet standards. The resources section of the pdent website is well worth a visit!

Top Tips for Supporting Pupils with Retention and Recall of Learning Pre-teaching:

• The aim of pre-teaching is to increase the familiarity of the lesson content. The more familiar something feels the more likely you are to engage with it and recall it.
• You could focus upon pre-teaching any if the following: subject specific vocabulary, a strategy (such as how to use a written procedure for column addition), how to use a resource/scaffold (for example: using a 100 square to add/subtract 10), the specific features of a written genre, preview a film clip or text extract…
• Before the lesson you explore the pre-teaching material and make it explicit how this will be used in the lesson.
• To help make this learning transferrable encourage the pupil to make some sort of resource that they take back into the lesson.

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