Supporting children with Special Educational Needs

Thornton provides an environment in which all children, including those with special educational needs, are supported to reach their full potential. The nominated person for inclusion is Josh Simpson. This provision fully supports the SEN policy used within school. The school’s Special Educational Needs Coordinator is Mrs Hayley Caldwell. If you wish to contact Mrs Caldwell please call the school office at 01530 230250 or email office@thornton.leics.sch.uk for attention of Mrs Caldwell.

A copy of the school’s SEND Policy, SEN Report and the Local Offer can be found below.
Thornton SEN Policy
Thornton SEND Information Report
Thornton Accessibility Plan

Definition of Special Educational Needs
Taken from Section 20 of The Children and Families Act 2014.

A child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for them. A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty or disability if they:

Have significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of the same age: or 
Have disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions.

Parents can feel assure that if their child requires additional support but does not fall into the category of Special Educational Needs, the school will provide all possible help to enable the child to progress. In such circumstances, the school is constrained by the funding provided by the Education Funding Agency (and this is never enough). 

All pupils on the SEN record should expect to have dedicated time on, at least, a weekly basis to have one-to-one support to help meet targets on their Support Plan.

Support Staff should familiarise themselves with the relevant Support Plans in order that their in-class support for pupils can take into account individual needs.

You can find out more about the Local Offer in Leicestershire here

Stages of SEN Support
The stages of SEN support at Thornton are indicated below: 

School Support
Quality First Teaching / additional support using school’s resources.
This is for the vast majority of pupls.

Specialist Support
This may be advisory or direct input with the pupil. It may or may not require some level of funding from the school.
This will be required in a minority of cases.

Support Plan
Additional support to access the curriculum due to significant and sustained educational needs. The school may apply for High Needs Funding, enabling the school to more effectively support the child.
This stage is for pupils whose ability is significantly below expected. 

Education, Health and Care Plan
This plan considers a number of needs which include a combination of education, health and welfare/social issues. Additional funding will be available to meet the child’s needs.
An extremely small percentage of pupils reach the stage of an Education, Health and Care Plan (i.e. roughly 1%).