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SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

Miss R Isom – Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator
The school’s Special Educational Needs (SEN) arrangements begin with Year 6 students whose parents receive a pro-forma requesting detailed information relating to any pre-existing special needs. This initial enquiry ensures effective continuity of provision as well as providing the school with valuable information about potential conditions in advance of each student’s entry into the school.
The progress of girls with known special educational needs is reviewed each term, but those girls who are considered to warrant closer monitoring may be subject to monthly reviews. All subject departments and pastoral year teams have on their agendas a mandatory item for ‘Pupils Causing Concern’, which ensures that both academic and pastoral needs are monitored regularly. Where concerns are identified, individual staff can use a Referral Form for SEN to ensure that additional assistance is arranged.
Initial testing for dyslexia is now provided in school. Initiatives are developed for supporting individual pupils and arrangements made for any further testing so that applications for special consideration can be made for public examinations. The school liaises closely with the Educational Psychologist who provides valuable professional advice on those girls with special needs.

Regular discussion takes place with staff concerned throughout the school and particularly through the school’s well-established pastoral system. Most importantly, communication is maintained with parents so that strategies for monitoring pupils with special needs are clearly understood by both home and school.
All students diagnosed as dyslexic have Individual Education Plans that are subject to termly review. Parents are invited to attend review meetings and each student is withdrawn from a single period to enable the appropriate attention to be given to the review process. After review a new IEP is drafted with appropriate targets. A Guide for Students and Parents on Dyslexia has been prepared and distributed and is on display in the staffroom. Staff have been briefed by the SENCO on appropriate teaching methods and are updated, as relevant, on the progress of dyslexic students. Those girls requiring extra enrichment benefit from a lunchtime session.
In a more general initiative, the Educational Psychology Service and the school’s SEN Co-ordinator successfully piloted a scheme to develop Social Skills and this has now been included in the Year 7 Personal and Social Education programme.
Support for students whose first language is not English is provided through tutoring after school. The ‘EAL’ club for lower school pupils is held on Thursdays and senior pupils meet on Mondays. This is a developing area providing much needed language support for a defined group of pupils.