Special Educational Needs

Many children will from time to time have difficulties with learning, requiring extra help with their education.  Such children are considered to have Special Educational Needs, or SEN.

Children with SEN have learning difficulties that makes it much harder for them to learn than most children of the same age. There is a wide range of Special Needs, from relatively minor needs that can be addressed in class, to a small number of children who have severe problems in learning and who need to have specialist help over several years.  It includes those with a range of physical or sensory difficulties, emotional and behavioural difficulties or difficulties with speech and language or social interaction.  Such children may need additional or different help from that given to other children of the same age.

Children with more acute needs are likely to have a formal written description of their needs and what is to be done for them to help them access learning.  This is called a Statement of Special Educational Needs and is drawn up by the Local Education Authority (Reading Borough Council).

Whatever the nature of the special educational need that your child has, it is important to get help as soon as possible.

Pre-School Children

If your child is below school age, and you think that they are slow in developing (such as acquiring language skills) or they are not hearing or seeing properly, you will be able to access advice and support at your child's nursery, play group or other early years setting, or your health visitor or your family doctor.

School Age Children

If you are concerned that your child is not making progress in school, your first contact should be with the class teacher. The teacher will be able to put in place any learning support or help that your child needs.

Some children will require considerably more help with their learning.  In some cases this may mean the school asking for advice or help from other professionals, focusing targets on their recommendations and writing Individual Education Plans.  They will discuss these with you at meetings in school and let you know the outcome of the support.  In a very few cases they may need to ask for a more formal assessment of a child's needs which may lead to the writing of a statement of special education needs.

Most assessments are requested by the child's school, but parents too have the right to request an assessment of their child's special educational needs.

A school would normally request Reading Borough Council to consider an assessment if the child's learning difficulties were significant enough to cause concern.  In support of the request for an assessment, the school would need to provide evidence that the child had received all means of help available for a reasonable amount of time without making the expected progress.  They would also need to provide clear evidence of the child's difficulties and the help received.  The Reading Borough Council SEN Panel would then consider the evidence and decide if a statutory assessment was appropriate.

If we agree to assess a child, the assessment is co-ordinated by the Special Educational Needs teams.  As part of the assessment process, and where appropriate, we are the first line of contact in the process for parents.  We aim to make the assessment process as straightforward as possible for parents, but as part of the assessment, we have to obtain reports from schools, educational psychologists, health and social services, as well as parents.

When the assessment is complete, and it is clear that we need to make a statement of special educational needs, we will issue to the parents a draft Statement of Special Educational Needs. We will then work with parents, schools and other to identify a suitable school place for the child.

If you need further advice about Special Educational Needs in Reading, or would like to check the progress of your child's assessment of special educational need, please contact us.

Article		Description
	The Sensory Consortium Service	An educational provision for children with visual, hearing or multi-sensory impairment

Downloads

PDF

Some of the following documents are in pdf format. You can download and install a free PDF reader to enable you to read and print them. Click here to download Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Reader from the Adobe website.

File	Type	Size	Download Time
Criteria for School Action, School Action + and Statutory Assessment May 2008	PDF	603 KB	56Kbps Modem: 2 Minutes Broadband : 12 Seconds
Guidance for Requests for Statutory Assessment May 2008	PDF	497 KB	56Kbps Modem: 2 Minutes Broadband : 10 Seconds

External Links

Reading Borough Council does not necessarily endorse or recommend any of the links or services below. Please note: when you follow these links you will leave this site.

Link	Description
Teachernet	Further information on SEN from the DfES
Parent Partnership, Reading	Promoting partnership between parents of children with special educational needs and those who provide services that can support them.