SEND at Caedmon

Caedmon Primary School is a mainstream, state funded school in the heart of Gateshead. We enjoy educating all children. The fabric of our school is based on inclusion, fairness and providing equal opportunities for all children to learn, play, develop and succeed.

In our school, we educate children with a variety of additional needs. These are:

• those who present with Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
• those who present with Dyspraxia.
• those who present with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome.
• those who present with physical difficulties.

• Those who present with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

• those who present with cerebral palsy.
• those with Speech and Language needs.
• those with Moderate Learning Difficulties.
• children with emotional, physical, behavioural and social needs. 

We also provide counselling for those deemed appropriate by parents/ carers and class teachers if a specific social or emotional need is identified.

Supporting Learning and Development at Caedmon

There are a variety of levels of support we offer children at Caedmon Primary School. These are as follows:

Whole class teaching - personalised to the needs of your child.

Following tracking and assessment of your child’s learning, class teachers (along with phase leaders and teaching assistants) can identify gaps in your child’s progress. Together with the SENDCo (and occasionally outside agencies), strategies are developed to help and support your child’s learning. These blueprints ensure that class teachers are informed of how children with SEN learn and can thrive in a whole class environment – thus growing self-esteem. Finally, staff at Caedmon appreciate and understand fully that we as adults have high and realistic expectations for all of our children.

Small group intervention with Teacher or Teaching Assistant.

When identified, children are afforded additional support either within or outside of the whole class environment. Variations of this type of support include: reading, maths, gross and fine motor skills, spelling, PSHE and writing. Children identified as requiring additional support will be given the opportunity to work with more targeted interventions with their peers, ensuring they are given the opportunity to close any gaps in their learning and succeed in a calmer environment.

One-to-One intervention.

It is also possible to provide one-to-one intervention if your child is finding a particular aspect of the curriculum particularly challenging, or if your child has a particular barrier to learning that requires addressing. These can include, fine and gross motor interventions, reading interventions, HFW interventions, Maths packages and social and emotional interventions.

Behaviour, social and emotional intervention.

As a school, we are caring and compassionate. We recognise that it is important for children with additional behavioural, social and emotional needs may find school challenging. Whilst we afford all children the opportunity to make choices, we appreciate that some may need to extra support in choosing the right path. To ensure that all children have a bright and happy school life, we run a Nurture club on a lunch time to help children remain calm if lunch times become too much for them. We also run social stories interventions for specific children on a morning, in which we identify daily targets and offer strategies to help ensure our school day runs smoothly. Social story interventions may also take place at different stages throughout the year including transitional stages in order to support pupils understanding of what is happening when and where.

Additional support from external agencies.

We recognise that often school leaders and teachers do not have all the answers. It is then our responsibility to involve external agencies with wider levels of expertise and experience. This academic year alone, we have worked with the following external agencies:

• HINT – High Incident Needs Team
• LINT – Low Incident Needs Team
• SALT – Speech and Language Therapy
• OT – Occupational Therapists.
• Educational psychologists from within the authority
• The Early Years Foundation Intervention Team.
• Kalmer Counselling
• Behaviour Support Team
• RISE Project (Intervention – NHS)
• CYPS (Children's and Young People's Services

To access the above support, it is essential that we communicate effectively with parents/ carers and acquire a signed parental consent form. We are of the belief that working with parent/carer in this incident drastically improves not only access to improved support for your child, but raises self-worth as the child feels essential to our school life. It also helps us identify any underlying issues which may be causing a barrier to learning.

Monitoring at Caedmon

Our school currently uses iTrack which is an online tracking system. This service will ensure we can keep readily available, detailed information on each learner. This information can be shared with parents/carers, outside agencies and governors on request.

If a child is making below acceptable progress, teachers would consult their phase leader and the SENDCo. In turn, a strategy will be created to help the child close the gaps and make accelerated progress. On occasion, this strategy might include involving outside agencies and professionals with specialist qualifications.