Special educational needs

Ark St Alban’s Academy has a skilled and extensive team working alongside pupils and their parents and their teachers to support pupils with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

This team comprises a SENCO, an Associate SENCO, a Deputy SENCO, a Pastoral Care Assistant, a Speech and Language therapist and a team of Teaching Assistants.

The SEND team can be contacted using the email sendco@arkstalbans.org.

At Ark St Alban’s every child is supported to succeed and flourish in everything that they do.

All pupils are supported to be fully included in every part of school life, and are given additional support where needed to ensure they can fully access the education and opportunities provided.

Staff are trained in identifying and sharing any emerging concerns about additional needs or disabilities pupils may have, and all colleagues share the responsibility to make sure that our school  is an inclusive school where every child can succeed.

Our work our SEND policy is informed by the SEND Code of Practice and by our work in partnership with Whole School SEND.

We work with a number of different external agencies to provide additional support pupils who have Special Educational Needs or disabilities:

• Speech and Language therapists
• Educational Psychologists
• Communication and Autism Team
• Pupil and School Support service (PSS)
• Hearing Impairment team
• Visual Impairment team
• Occupational therapists

As well as teachers being responsible and accountable for the progress and development of all the pupils in their classes, we also offer the following interventions:

• Pupil Passports
• Social Communications Groups
• Lexia
• Reading Fluency
• Fresh Start Phonics
• Place 2Be (school-based counselling)
• Speech and Language intervention
• Social and emotional skills sessions

We also work closely with local authority service providers: accesstoeducation.birmingham.gov.uk

We will assess each pupil’s current skills and levels of attainment on entry, which will add to information gathered from previous settings and key stages, where appropriate. Subject teachers, curriculum leaders and pastoral leaders will make regular assessments of progress for all pupils. This may include progress in areas other than attainment, for example, social skill development.

In doing so subject teachers, curriculum leaders & pastoral leaders will 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

Slow progress and low attainment will not automatically mean a pupil is recorded as having special educational needs (SEN). 

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.

To contact the SEND team directly during term time, please email SENDCO@arkstalbans.org, or speak to your child’s Head of Year.

Where pupils are transitioning to secondary from Year 6, the academy SENDCO will have a discussion with colleagues at the primary school the gather relevant information and in most cases, the academy SENDCO will seek to visit the primary school in-person. For pupils with an EHC plan, the academy SENDCO will also invite the pupil and the family for an extended visit and tour of the school, prior the end of Year 6 and ahead of any cohort-wide induction days.

Where Y6 pupils have been identified to have communication & interaction needs which will likely make the transition school more challenging than their peers, they will be invited to take part in additional transition days in the summer term of Year 6. 

All pupils in Year 9 will have a one-to-one careers information & guidance (CIAG) discission with the academy’s careers leader ahead of of discussions around selecting GCSE subjects. These discussions will be shared with the academy SENDCO and parents ahead of the annual review meeting in order to inform any required changes to provision.

Throughout Year 10 and Year 11, all pupils with an EHC plan will have at least three one-to-one careers information & guidance discussion with the academy’s careers leader (Y10 Sum2, Y11 Aut2 and Y11 Spr1). These discussions are intended to make sure the pupil understands the post-16 landscape (Y10 Sum2), has ambitious and appropriate preferred destinations (Y11 Aut2) and is therefore able to name appropriate preferred destinations in their Y11 annual review meeting (Y11 Spr1).

On GCSE results day (and on A-Level results day), the academy will designate a leader with the specific responsibility for making sure pupils with SEND (and their parents) receive and understand appropriate information and guidance around immediate next steps.

Similar CIAG provision will also be available for all pupils in the sixth form who are on the SEN register. One-to-one discussions in Y12 Sum2, Y13 Aut2 and Y13 Spr1 will be held to make sure ambitious and appropriate plans for higher