A day in the life of a Senco

Paula Byrne explains her role as Senco at St Charles RC Primary School.

Boy in wheelchair enjoying painting with teacher

What is a typical day in a life of a Senco” I found myself thinking.
As Senco every day is different and that is why I thoroughly enjoy each day and I have developed an ever-growing interest in special educational needs.
A Senco’s day is one of variety which sees the clock ticking by extremely quickly and sometimes there are never enough hours in the day.

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      string(4350) "attached to every child who meets certain deprivation criteria, and is tracked through a variety of accountability measures, the SEND payment is neither ring-fenced nor tracked. Schools can, therefore, use it in whatever way they choose. If the child is at the centre of the system, he or she will benefit from the funds. However, if balancing the books takes centre stage, schools may not choose to spend the money on the children it is intended to support.Unfortunately, some unkind and unethical practices were described in evidence to the committee. Those such as LAs which see their role as to ‘enforce necessary discrimination’ in allocating inequitable SEN payments. In addition, the Gateshead MP, Ian Mearns, highlighted that the not all Local Authorities employ a system of ‘banding’ SEN needs. Whilst a blunt instrument, this mechanism for allocating payment at least makes some attempt to meet the needs of all students. The 13 per cent who have another system (or no system at all) constitute a ‘postcode lottery’ for parents uncertain about whether their child will be given extra support, and at what level this is and what it will entail. Only 2 per cent of LAs have increased the payment amounts in each of the bands to try to keep in line with inflation. School budgets, therefore, whilst famously tight, make no additional adequate provision for the increasing complexities and frequency of SEN demands. So, again, the call goes out to put the words of Nicky Morgan and Edward Timpson into practice. Put children first.4 The committee heard that progress against historic aims to improve provision for pupils with special educational needs was still not sufficient. The reductions in processing time for SEN cases proposed in 1996 and again in 2011 still were not evident. This leads, in many cases, to families taking matters into their own hands, and, often for their own and their child’s emotional well-being, electing to home-school the child. 40 per cent of cases take over 18 months to process, leading to children being overlooked, isolated, seen as absentees from school and finding it ever more difficult to re-integrate into their social and educational networks. A kinder solution needs to be found. Where connections are forged around a child at the centre, with their needs at the top of the agenda. Educationalists, civil servants, school leaders and health professionals, acting ‘in loco parentis’ – doing for each child what they would wish done for their own are what is needed. The educational system it seems, is stuck in a ‘flat earth syndrome’. Seemingly it believes that a problem it no longer can see no longer exists. Pushing difficult cases to the margins does not deal with them, they do reappear in other places. The educational world is round and what’s called for is rounded professionals prepared to make ethical and moral choices (yes, even financial ones) so that rounded children and young people can emerge as products of responsible, tolerant partnerships of professionals. SEN heads, the Select Committee and AfA agreed this week that not all the solutions are costly or complicated, but they do require an ethos of inclusion and tolerance in the system. Georgina Newton is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Warwick.NotesEducation Committee (2018, October 23). Parliament Live: https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/c8c06847-94c9-4bfc-bf7a-4c37d8eb39e9Ovenden-Hope (2018) Teach by the beach: How to retain teachers in coastal schools. Press release, retrieved from Marjon University: https://www.marjon.ac.uk/about-marjon/news-and-events/marjon-news/teach-by-the-beach—how-to-retain-teachers-in-coastal-schools.htmlLopez Solé, S., Zaragoza, M.C., & Diaz-Gibson, J. (2018). Improving interaction in teacher training programmes: The rise of the social dimension in pre-service teacher education. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 24(6):644-658. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1459541Department for Education (2016). Putting children first: Delivering our vision for excellent children’s social care. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/554573/Putting_children_first_delivering_vision_excellent_childrens_social_care.pdf"
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Inclusion

How much tolerance is there in our system?

4 Dec 2018

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      string(5659) "claim that TAs themselves lack the objectivity, confidenceand skills to do so. Their exclusion from whole school agendas is reflected in theirexclusion from whole staff meetings. Webster (2009:25) suggests ‘just one in five’attend school-based inset. Therefore, it could be assumed although wrongly, thattraining for TAs was offered through alternative provision. Yet Webster (2009:25)later adds only ‘half had attended non-school based training and less than one-third had attended training that led to a qualification’. TAs should not only begiven chance to attend but should also contribute to even lead, whole schooltraining. TAs leading training on how to utilise their skills in the classroom willreopen the dialogue and will not be seen as another management led intervention.The SENCo can guide the agenda but the TA should lead the dissemination to thestaff. 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Special Needs

Practice File: The SENCo/TA partnership

14 Mar 2013

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      string(5614) "emotional issues, which means they’re getting access to the right help when they need it rather than letting things spiral, which could then start having an impact on their academic progress and mental health. We have a number of examples where this early help has turned things around for the child and they’ve kept on track at school and feel happy and confident in their learning.If, after a series of interventions have been put in place, there are still concerns, then teachers will share their concerns with me, and together we will look at children’s evidence, e.g. work in books, assessments, progress over time etc. At this stage it is likely that a ‘My Plan’ will be put in place. The ‘My Plan’ (referred to as SEN support in other counties) is an action plan which identifies the child’s needs and outcomes and the actions needed to achieve these outcomes. 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Of course, for some of our SEND children it becomes clear that they have more significant needs or the child may not be making progress on a ‘My Plan’ so a multi-agency approach will need to be considered which leads to a ‘My Plan+’ or an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP).  The EHCP involves working closely with families and other professionals from Education, Health and Social Care. As we have built close relationships with parents and carers of all children, this relationship is even more crucial for building an understanding of the child’s needs and ensuring these needs are met. What has become clear from EHCP Annual Review meetings is that the additional support that is needed for parents/carers of these children and the need to work as a team are vital. Our Family Support Worker is again an essential link in signposting services outside of school. 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Childfile

Child File - The Graduated Response: making it effective in an early years setting - Part 2

17 Apr 2018

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      string(5655) "between all those involved in educatingthose who have special educational needs has been helpedby the move to co-locate mainstream and special provisionon the same site and often in the same building, with eachretaining its own identity. Just to give a couple of examples:recently, while researching for a book, I visited an SLDschool, which has been rebuilt together with a new primaryschool. There is one entrance, with each school’s name andlogo on one of the double doors. Each school has its ownclassrooms, but shares all the other facilities. There is onestaff ro om. Think of the amount of professionaldevelopment that that encourages for both the schools.Another example is an all-age school for the blind andvisually impaired, where the secondary department hasbeen built on as a wing to an existing mainstreamsecondary school, while the primary depar tment, on the54CommentCommentCommentCommentComment Special educational needsManaging Schools Today     April/May 2007same campus, has been built between a new infant and anew junior school. All three schools are under the same roof,and, walking down the corridor fr om one end of thebuilding to the other, there is no demarcation betweenthem. Staff and pupils mingle with each other, yet thespecialist teaching and facilities remain intact for thoseneeding to learn Braille, or have mobility training, as theyhave their own staff and specially adapted classrooms. Co-location takes many forms, but it can be an imaginative wayof combining the best of both worlds – not only for thosein the special schools but allowing mainstream pupils whohave SEN to have greater access to support as well.Federations are another way of grouping schoolstogether. Smaller federations, which are known as ‘hardfederations’, will have a shared governing body, whilesome of the larger federations may be made up of severalmainstream schools, secondar y and primary, as well asone or two special schools and perhaps one or morePRUs. These are making great strides in wor king togetherto achieve a greater spread of opportunities for all theirpupils and using more constructively a greater pool ofexpertise.One of the best known examples where federation andco-loc ation has been combined is the DarlingtonEducation Village, with a primary, special and secondaryschool all under one roof and one governing body. eachschool has its own head teacher, with a chief executive,who was the former head of the sp ecial school, co-ordinating the work of all three schools. The BuildingSchools for the Future programme has helped many localauthorities to look at the possibilities of co-lo cating orfederating some of their provision.Yet another feature of the growing collaborationbetween schools and services is the way all types ofschools are working together in various partnerships, suchas 14–19 or extended schools consor tiums. Almost allmainstream secondary schools are now specialist schoolsin one or more areas of the curriculum and have to sharetheir expertise with other schools in the locality. In anothersign of their long-term future, special schools may go fora curriculum specialism or an SEN specialism in one of thefour areas of the SEN Co de of Prac tice: namely,Communication and Interaction; Cognition and Learning;Behaviour, Emotional and S ocial Development; andSensory and Physical Needs.My final document is another report from Ofsted:Inclusion: Does it matter where pupils are taught? One ofOfsted’s main conclusions was:“The most important factor in determining the best outcomesfor pupils with learning difficulties and disabilities is not the typebut the quality of the provision. Effective provision was distributedequally in the mainstream and special schools visited, but therewas more good and outstanding provision in resourcedmainstream schools than elsewhere. Pupil Referral Units were theleast successful of all the settings visited.”While some of us might wish to quibble about the lastpart of this quote, given that PRUs take pupils who are theones who have failed elsewhere, and special schools oftenhave more complex pupils that resourced mainstr eamschools, the important point to note is that effec tiveprovision was distributed across the whole range.And so to conclude. Graham Greene once wrote: “Thereis always a moment in a child’s life when the door opensand lets the future in.” Together we can find ways ofopening that door for the pupils who find it hardest tolearn. And the more we work together – special andmainstream, maintained, non-maintained andindependen t special schools, support ser vices andvoluntary agencies; in co-located settings, federationsand par tnerships – and the more we remove any barriersbetween us and acc ept joint responsibility for theprogress and well-being of our children, the more likelywe are to open that door for all pupils, including thosewho need our help the most.In order to move forward, we need to take the fiveoutcomes of Every Child Matters, which were suggestedby the children themselves, and ask ourselves thesequestions. What can we do to give all our children thebest chance of being healthy and of feeling safe? Ho wc an we ensure that they enjoy their education and sohave a chance of achieving success, not just within thenarrow confines of government targets, but in terms oftheir all-round personal development? How can w emake sure that the y all have the opportunity toparticipate fully in the life of their school and know theirc ontribution is valued? And how can we give them thet ools they need to hold down a job, or become"
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Leadership

Let the future in

7 Aug 2007

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