School SEN Policies and Information Reports

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Schools (including mainstream schools, nurseries, and academy schools) must publish information on their websites about their arrangements for meeting the needs of pupils with SEN. This includes their SEN Policy and SEN Information Report. These should be freely available to download from their websites and must be updated annually (any changes to the information occurring during the year should be updated as soon as possible).

An SEN Policy should tell you about arrangements and responsibilities the school has for meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND. This should include information on legal obligations and guidelines, the school's aims, objectives and vision, the roles and responsibilities of staff and arrangements for monitoring and evaluation. 

The SEN Information Report should tell you about how the SEN Policy is applied in practice. You should expect to see information on how the school identifies and monitors for SEND, how they support children and young people identified with SEND, their ambitions for children and young people with SEND and how they will achieve them. 

Schools should ensure that the report is easily accessible by young people and parents and is set out in clear, straightforward language. It should also give details of the school’s contribution to the Local Offer and must include information on where the local authority’s Local Offer is published.

A group of local SENCOs have recently undertaken a peer-review process, which tested the statutory compliance of their reports and identified key areas of good practice for the future. Attached below is a document that outlines some of the findings of this process, and also some useful templates that you might want to replicate when you review your document next.

We have worked with local schools to makes sure their SEN Policies and SEN Information Reports are available on the Local Offer. To download these for any school, naviagate to their record on the Local Offer directory and click on the download link on the right-hand side of the page. 

What does an SEN Information Report contain?

According to SEND Code of Practice (2015) section 6.79, the SEN Information Report must include information about:

  • the kinds of SEN that are provided for
  • policies for identifying children and young people with SEN and assessing their needs, including the name and contact details of the SENCO (mainstream schools)
  • arrangements for consulting parents of children with SEN and involving them in their child’s education
  • arrangements for consulting young people with SEN and involving them in their education
  • arrangements for assessing and reviewing children and young people’s progress towards outcomes; which should include the opportunities available to work with parents and young people as part of this assessment and review
  • arrangements for supporting children and young people in moving between phases of education and in preparing for adulthood; as young people prepare for adulthood outcomes should reflect their ambitions, which could include higher education, employment, independent living and participation in society
  • the approach to teaching children and young people with SEN
  • how adaptations are made to the curriculum and the learning environment of children and young people with SEN
  • the expertise and training of staff to support children and young people with SEN, including how specialist expertise will be secured
  • evaluating the effectiveness of the provision made for children and young people with SEN
  • how children and young people with SEN are enabled to engage in activities available with children and young people in the school who do not have SEN
  • support for improving emotional and social development. This should include extra pastoral support arrangements for listening to the views of children and young people with SEN and measures to prevent bullying
  • how the school involves other bodies, including health and social care bodies, local authority support services and voluntary sector organisations, in meeting children and young people’s SEN and supporting their families
  • arrangements for handling complaints from parents of children with SEN about the provision made at the school 6.80 The above should include arrangements for supporting children and young people who are looked after by the local authority and have SEN

Related Advice

  1. Specialist resource bases in mainstream schools
  2. Independent special institutions

Downloads

  1. SEN Information Report - Peer Review
  2. SEN Info Report - Statutory Checklist
  3. SEN Info Report - Self and Peer review template
  4. SEN Info Report - Quality audit

Page last reviewed: 12/03/2024

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