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(5650) "principles of the new Code of Practice—and, in particular, the emphasis that every teacher is a teacher of SEND with the expertise to plan for and lead practice—to be made explicit and to revisit areas of need, structurally reviewing how these could be accommodated in classrooms.Improving the impact of teaching assistantsWith teacher expectation regarding SEND being challenged, this was also the time to fundamentally review the role and deployment of support staff. Several guides were useful in developing the vision for change—in particular, Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants3, and the Sutton Trust’s Making Best Use of Teaching Assistants4. An audit was undertaken to enable effectiveness of the existing pattern of support staff to be objectively assessed by the leadership team. Evidence was generated through the performance management cycle, with teaching staff commenting on effectiveness by rating the support staff’s different areas of expertise. This audit also recorded levels of attendance. Sharples, Webster and Blatchford’s cycle regarding the deployment and development of teaching assistants (TAs) was critical in shaping the establishment of the new approach.5 This is summarised in figure 2 below.A new, weekly team meeting, set up and led by the SENCo with support staff, to take place during a tutor period, was a key opportunity to communicate new thinking over an extended period of time. At the heart of these meetings was sharing information about the new Code—the changing role of the teaching assistant and the focus on quality intervention. This was also a forum for good practice to be shared by teaching assistants, discussing strategies to deal with different needs, sharing interventions that worked—and those that didn’t—and giving feedback on courses that had been attended. The empowerment of support staff to share their own views fed into other related changes. For example, the TAs began attending morning briefings for teaching staff. They were also each assigned a pigeon hole in the staffroom, which became their ‘base’. Previously, support staff had used their own break room, which acted as an unnecessary barrier to them building up relationships with teaching staff. As the audit of expertise and training among support staff was completed, we realised that the aims of the new SEND Code of Practice would be difficult to achieve with our current deployment model. There was a strong need to move away from the traditional widespread deployment of the ‘generic’ TA, where impact of intervention could not be deployed and independence of SEND students decreased. It was now essential that the senior leadership team redefine the role of support staff and emphasise the expectation that ‘the needs of all pupils must be addressed, first and foremost, through excellent classroom teaching’.6With this redefinition came the change in structure. While a small number of support staff had been departmentally based before the review, this pattern of deployment was extended right across the curriculum, with an associated emphasis on recording interventions and empowering more appropriately trained and departmentally-focused support staff to log the impact of the intervention on the student. In essence, we were now further extending the acknowledgement by Sharples, Webster and Blatchford of good practice that: ‘In secondary schools, giving English and maths departments the responsibility for coordinating the day-to-day roles of TAs will help ensure teachers have full control of the variables they need to plan effective provision.’7There was also a subtle, but highly significant, change in nomenclature. Teaching assistant became intervention assistant. These increasingly subject specialist colleagues now worked with—and were part of—departmental teams in English, maths, science, humanities, languages, and the creative and performing arts. At the same time, and alongside the pattern of increased departmental deployment, a team of SEND core staff were appointed with responsibility for key areas of need defined by the code of practice and trained to deliver specific interventions. The autism spectrum disorder (ASD) intervention assistant, for instance, developed expertise with interventions such as social story interventions, social skills interventions, ALERT programmes and anger management. As intervention became specific to a role so too did it become more measurable.Data mattersAs roles became linked to specific interventions, it became much easier to develop a clear provision map for SEND. With support staff now working as intervention assistants, the idea that students were to be in all lessons and not removed, and that the teacher was the expert, could be fulfilled more effectively. If students were removed from class for a very specific intervention, this was planned and related to the work being missed to ensure smooth reintegration back into class. As interventions were regulated, it also became possible to cost them far more effectively and audit the costings for individual students so that Education, Health and Care (EHC) assessment requests could be submitted to the Local Authority where necessary.A new role was created to act as key liaison between support staff and the SENCo—the SEND secretary. The role has subsequently evolved into that of a data manager, who is now able to update a provision map, produce impactful performance data (see figure 3) for senior leaders, and link meetings with department heads, providing"
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Differentiation

Cultural Change

28 Oct 2016