Highgate Primary is a fully inclusive school that strives to provide the best education for all children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities
As a result, we have relatively high numbers of children at school with additional needs. Whilst this means that our resources can at times be stretched, we offer significant expertise with regard to SEND and a positive attitude towards inclusion.
Emma Healy is our SENDCo. Her regular working days are Mondays to Wednesdays.
Emma can contact at:
If a child has special educational needs, it is very important that they get the help they need as soon as possible. In order to make sure that any special educational needs not known about before starting school are picked up early, all pupils are assessed in an informal manner during the first three weeks at school. We look closely at children’s speech, language and communication skills.
Children’s progress throughout school is closely monitored through our termly assessment and monitoring procedures, so that any special needs that may become apparent later are identified. Additional assessments and screening may be used to explore any potential issues further.
Highgate Primary School has developed a wide range of ways in which we support children with different special needs or disabilities. We plan support as follows:
Children with special educational needs are taught alongside other children in their class, however lessons are designed so that all children in the class learn and make progress.
We do this by adapting lesson plans, in which children are able to work towards different learning goals within the lesson, or are provided with additional resources to support their learning.
Every class teacher plans, monitors and provides support for pupils within their class including children with special educational needs. This is known as ‘Quality First Teaching’. Additional teachers and/or teaching assistants may provide individually targeted, small-group interventions beyond normal class lessons.
Class teachers can access support from the SENCo to help them make provision for children with special educational needs. If necessary, a child with SEN may be supported with additional adult support, and their timetable personalised further.
Part of the school’s budget is set aside for support with special educational needs and disabilities. This is a fixed amount and so we have to use the money as cost-effectively as possible and make sure we can give help to all the children who need it. We cost all the ways we support children in order to evaluate the impact of the support on children’s progress. Decisions about which support programmes are best for a child are made by the Inclusion Manager and SENCo, in consultation with a child’s class teacher and parents, who are invited to contribute to planning. The school may also seek advice from the school’s Educational Psychologist in order to decide which programmes to use with children.
In exceptional circumstances, where we feel we are not able to meet a child’s needs from our own funds we will apply to the local authority for additional support for a child in the form of an EHCP. Parents can do this too. We are happy to discuss all of this in more detail with parents. There is a high threshold to meet and a significant amount of evidence is required; for this reason, such applications are only made in exceptional cases.
We work hard to maintain good home/school links. We have a regular newsletter with general news about the school. We have two parent consultation evenings per year (one in the autumn term and one in the Spring term) as well as an Open Evening to meet next year’s teacher in the summer term. Parents also receive an annual written report about their child’s progress.
For children with special educational needs, we have a meeting with parents each term. For children with an Education, Health and Care Plan, the last one of these will be the Annual Review, to which we invite external professionals. We try as far as possible to arrange these meetings at a mutually convenient time for parents, teachers and other professionals.
We have a number of children with autism in our school community. However, as the saying goes, ‘once you have met one person with autism, you have met one person is autism’: everyone is different and has individual challenges to face.
Dyslexia is very common. It affects 1 in 10 people. It is a specific learning difficulty that primarily affects reading and writing skills. It often affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling. However, it does not only affect these skills. Dyslexia is actually about information processing. Dyslexic children may struggle to process or remember information they see or hear, which can affect learning and the acquisition of literacy skills.
Down’s syndrome is caused by the presence of an extra chromosome in a baby’s cells, and around 1 in every 1000 babies born in the UK will have Down’s syndrome. It is typically associated with different rates of physical and cognitive development. People with Down’s syndrome may possess these attributes to varying degrees, and just like everyone else, their ability levels vary widely too
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that affects people’s behaviour. People with ADHD can seem restless, may have trouble concentrating and may act on impulse. Children with ADHD may find it hard to follow instructions, organise themselves for activities and struggle to focus and complete tasks.
