How does the school secure and use SEND funding for my child?

How is SEND funded at Christ the King Catholic School?

 

All schools in England receive Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) funding through a three-tiered system, primarily composed of a core budget called 'notional' SEN, for meeting the everyday SEND throughout the school, e.g. our ordinarily available provision; a low-cost needs which would help to fund much of the targeted or some specialist support for more specific needs; and for more complex cases a 'named pupil allowance' element of funding, this would be for children with an EHCP.  All of our funding for SEND in the mainstream school is funded in this way.  For our resource base funding, funding is secured through the low-cost needs and a stream of funding called 'top-up' funding for each pupil admission within the resource base.

 

The above funding should be sufficient to meet your child's needs, but where the school feel that NPA (mainstream) or top-up (resource base) funding is not sufficient to provide all the aspects set out in section F of your child's EHCP, then we will refer this to the Local Authority for consideration using a costed provision map.

How does SEND funding help to secure resources for my child?

 

The funding provided through notional SEN and low-cost needs budget within our school ensures that we are able to source all aspects of our ordinarily available provision and many aspects of our targeted provision from our school universal offer, which you can view here. These school budgets cover approximately £6,000 of any necessary costs to meet your child's SEND requirements.


For some elements of targeted provision, and for most specialist elements of SEND provision, (outlined within our universal offer) this will be funded by your child's top-up or NPA, a separate funding source secured through the Local Authority.

It may be that your child’s needs mean we need to secure:
            - Extra equipment or facilities
            - More teaching assistant hours
            - Further training for our staff
            - External specialist expertise

If that’s the case, we will consult with external agencies to get recommendations on what will best help your child access their learning.

What training is available to staff at Christ the King to support pupils with SEND?

What training have our school team had?

At Christ the King Catholic School, we know that parents want to be secure in the knowledge that our school team are well trained and have the expertise to support your child's needs. We are proud of the ongoing training and CPD that we offer for all of our staff in school and the positive impact that this has on our pupils.

The majority of our training is delivered to all classroom staff, as we recognise that both teachers and teaching assistants are crucial in supporting the needs of pupils with SEND.  Training delivered to our current staff team includes:

  • SEMH awareness training
  • Cognitive Visual Impairment awareness
  • Thrive Approach
  • Rapid catch-up phonics
  • Autism Awareness (Bucket Time, Curiosity Approach
  • Vocabulary awareness training
  • Widgit
  • Quality First Teaching ongoing CPD, in particular use of Teaching WalkThrus

Additionally all of our class teachers have been trained this year in dyscalculia, making reasonable adaptations, colour-coding sentences for writing support, and have all engaged in role appropriate training with NASEN (e.g. subject specific SEND training or support for Early Career Teachers).

Some individual staff members have been provided for specific training for the individual needs of some learners, this includes:

  • Physical support for pupils with mobility needs
  • Epilepsy training
  • Diabetes training
  • Team Teach training (Restrictive Physical Intervention)
  • Wiltshire SEND network meetings
  • Wiltshire inclusion meetings
  • Wiltshire Resource Base network meetings
  • PEP training (for CLA)
  • Mrs Butler, teaching within the Resource Base, is a qualified SENDCo.
  • Mrs Short is a level 2 Makaton practitioner.
  • Mrs McIlvar is a qualified Thrive practitioner.
  • Mrs Lunn is currently completing her Forest School practitioner training.

How do we secure specialist training for our school?

 

Sometimes we need extra help to offer our pupils the support they need. Whenever necessary we will work with external support services to meet the needs of our pupils with SEN and to support their families. These include:

  • Speech and language therapists: including an SLT one day per week for the resource base
  • Educational psychologists
  • Occupational therapists
  • GPs or paediatricians
  • School nurses
  • Child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS)
  • Education welfare officers (EWO)
  • Social services and other local authority (LA)-provided support services
  • Virtual Schools team
  • Outreach support from specialist schools (currently Exeter House)
  • Voluntary sector organisations
  • Behaviour Support Service, including SEMH Inclusion Advisory Teacher
  • Mainstream Inclusion Support Advisor (LA)
  • School Improvement Advisor for the Resource Base
  • Other advisors and support from or commissioned by the Trust

 

How are training needs and SEND provision of resources reviewed and impact monitored?

 

We have an ongoing cycle of monitoring and review, and this enables us to plan for suitable CPD and training in a timely way and implement this quickly. Review and monitoring is carried out by the school staff with responsibility, the Trust Director of School Improvement, link LGC Governors and Advisors from within the Local Authority.  This is then triangulated to identify additional training needs and next steps for the school.