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Session 5 – The SEND code of practice

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Session overview

Supporting pupils with a greater level of need can be challenging. The SEND Code of Practice has been developed to support you to teach pupils who may require additional provision.

In this session, you will develop your understanding of the SEND Code of Practice by exploring:

The SEND Code of Practice
The graduated approach

Approximate session length: 30 minutes

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The SEND Code of Practice

Adapting your teaching practice to support all pupils to succeed does not necessarily mean an increase in workload. The strategies that have been covered so far are all features of effective high-quality teaching. By mastering the use of these methods (e.g. effective scaffolding, deployment of support staff, and flexible grouping) you will be supporting most of your pupils to succeed at a task.

Building these strategies into your everyday practice should be the first step taken to support all pupils to succeed. However, there will be a small number of your pupils for whom these strategies need to be developed further.

There are a number of reasons why a pupil may require further adaptation to practice. For example, it may be permanent adaptation; to support a pupil with a hearing impairment you may learn key signs or wear a microphone. Alternatively, the adaptation may only be required at a specific point in their education, such as the supporting of the emotional health and wellbeing of a pupil whose parents are separating.

Pupils with SEND may need a more personalised level of adaptive practice in order to access and achieve in all areas of the curriculum. The SEND Code of Practice (2014) is a document that supports teachers and leaders to understand their responsibilities and duty of care towards pupils with a special educational need. The

Code of Practice itself is 292 pages long (a link to which can be found on the final slide), so how can it be used by teachers to help inform their practice?

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The SEND Code of Practice

The Code of Practice highlights four broad areas of need. These are:

Communication and interaction needs such as Asperger’s Syndrome
Cognition and learning needs such as dyslexia
Social, emotional and mental health difficulties such as an attachment disorder
Sensory or physical needs such as visual impairment

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The SEND Code of Practice

Hear from Kenny Wheeler, from the Driver Youth Trust, as he highlights key points from the document that every teacher should be aware of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cdDHLcx6Nc&feature=emb_title

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The graduated approach

When supporting pupils with SEND to access the curriculum, the Code of Practice recommends adopting a graduated approach to your practice. This approach helps you to find out what strategies will support pupils to access their learning, and crucially, which strategies aren’t working for them. It involves working with many different stakeholders such as the pupil themselves, parents or careers, outside agencies and very importantly, the SENCo at your school. The extent to which these stakeholders are involved will depend on the pupils’ needs. The graduated approach can be used to support any pupil who requires more personalised adaptions in order to access learning; they do not have to be diagnosed with SEN.

The graduated approach consists of four stages: assess, plan, do, review. It is designed to put the pupil at the centre, and each stage supports the teacher to make adaptations to their learning environment or practice to better support the individual pupil.

The cycle is continuous and can span a short period of time (around 2 weeks) or can be used over a longer period (over a half-term). As such, it enables the teacher to be responsive to what is working well, and to stop actions that aren’t having the desired impact.

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The graduated approach

Listen again to Kenny Wheeler as he explains each step of the approach with some tangible examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2UTcJjjbP0&feature=emb_title

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Activity

Watch the video below to hear from Kelly Challis from the Driver Youth Trust, as she explains how she uses the graduated approach to adapt her learning environment and practice to support pupils with dyslexia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ognIWQWbGg&feature=emb_title

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Activity

Having heard from Kelly, now think of a pupil in your class who has a learning need. Consider:

steps you have already taken to overcome any barriers to their learning
where those actions fall in relation to the stages of the graduated approach – plan, assess, do, or review

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Begin to familiarise yourself with;

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/398815/SEND_Code_of_Practice_January_2015.pdf