An integral part of our approach to ensuring every student is equipped with the skills and knowledge to succeed is inclusivity.
Across our school and the GORSE Academies Trust, leaders have a strong commitment to creating an inclusive environment for all students, and in particular for those with SEND.
Creating a strong network of support for SEND students and dismantling barriers is a golden thread that runs throughout every decision made, with crucial work having been undertaken to ensure SEND provision is not treated as an afterthought or a tick-box exercise.
Leading by example
The key to creating an inclusive culture is to ensure there is buy-in at every level – our leaders both within our school and across the trust must be committed to transforming the lives of children with SEND.
Ahead of any major decisions being made, questions are always asked about how this will affect students with SEND and whether we could be doing more to further inclusivity.
This includes both inside and outside of the classroom and even with decisions that may not initially appear to affect students’ accessibility directly at all, such as around standard health and safety regulations.
This approach reinforces the message to staff that SEND is a leading priority, while also building awareness and understanding of how to be inclusive.
We have also found that the more we include SEND in our decision-making, the more our staff are interested in hearing about how we are supporting students and importantly how they can expand their own support too.
In fostering an inclusive environment it is imperative that students with SEND are not made to feel isolated from the rest of the school. The SEND department shouldn’t act as an island – instead, there should be an active effort made to ensure they are included in every part of school life.
A leading example of this is that our SEND experts often go into classrooms and work directly with teachers to help enhance the inclusivity of their teaching and curriculum as well as to support students. When our SEND staff are shown to be a core part of the school, this is picked up on by all students.
Embedding SEND into the curriculum
Ensuring full accessibility and inclusion in every aspect of school life has been the guiding principle when setting and enacting our SEND strategy for learning and development.
We have developed the strategy based on five priorities for teaching and learning, called THINK 5, which enable us to deliver high-quality teaching that supports students with SEND to learn well. These five priorities are:
- Effective planning.
- Explicit instructions.
- Cognitive and metacognitive strategies.
- Flexible grouping.
These have been embedded into the curriculum through the creation of a CPD programme, through which we have reinforced the importance of adapting learning methods to ensure that the success of students with SEND is a priority.
This is revisited through weekly SEND bulletins to continue to promote effective pedagogy for students with SEND and to share key notices and updates regarding provision for individual students.
Creating a network of SEND champions
We introduced a network of SEND champions who are key colleagues within each curriculum area tasked with promoting a high standard of teaching and inclusion for children with SEND.
Within each subject, our SEND champions ensure their department is always thinking about the impact on students with SEND when setting out plans for the curriculum, creating lesson structures, or making any future subject planning decisions.
This bridges the gap between SEND provision and curriculum provision, ensuring the curriculum is fully accessible.
During every subject meeting, our SEND champions are given dedicated time to discuss any concerns or ideas they have with their department. This time can be used to discuss an individual student's progress or their general approach to provision and can also be used to brainstorm ideas to improve inclusivity within their subject area.
For example, in PE, adaptive equipment has been introduced to help ensure every child can participate in the different sports we offer, including investing in adaptive gloves for rowing. The priority is placed on ensuring every student is able to fully access the depth and breadth of our curriculum.
In addition to encouraging departments to make subject-specific adaptions to ensure inclusivity, the SEND champions work collaboratively with leaders to develop whole-school approaches. This includes reflecting on barriers to learning and gaps in their knowledge in a sequence of lessons and then most importantly, looking at what is being done by the teacher to overcome these to secure their learning.
The SEND champions meet as a group every half-term, providing them with an opportunity to discuss how each department is progressing, what challenges they have faced, and to support each other in finding solutions.
The meetings are also used to deliver CPD, which includes talks from external agencies and other sector experts, and creates a space to share learning, which is then disseminated back to curriculum areas.
Further enhancing our SEND offer
It is important that outside of the classroom, students with SEND are accessing the same opportunities as their peers. To enhance our SEND offering, we have created the Personalised Support Centre (PSC), where our students are provided with further opportunities to help enrich their learning.
Through the PSC, students can access a range of additional support such as additional literacy and numeracy tutoring, hand-writing lessons, counselling or self-care lessons. It also provides enriching opportunities to students including bespoke career sessions, support for community events to help raise money for charity, and a cooking award.
The positive impact of creating these additional initiatives and support streams is immeasurable. Our students feel more engaged and enthusiastic about being in school, while helping them to see that they are an important part of our community.
We also make adaptions for whole school initiatives, to ensure they are open to anyone – this includes our sports programmes and our GORSE Gets Healthy initiative. When creating these extra-curricular activities and opportunities, we always make a conscious effort to ensure inclusion, by reserving spots for students with SEND, which also helps to encourage them to take part.
Final thoughts
Our work to implement an inclusive culture and a whole-school approach to SEND has enabled us to have a demonstratable impact on raising the aspirations of students with SEND and their families. The unwavering commitment from leaders to promote inclusivity is what has enabled us to implement such a successful approach to SEND provision.
For every member of staff across our school and trust, inclusion is non-negotiable, and with the support of our SEND champions, we now have a strong network of staff who are consistently advocating on behalf of our SEND students to keep their needs at the forefront of all our minds.
- Ben Mallinson is principal at the Ruth Gorse Academy in Leeds. The school was named Secondary Provision of the Year at the 2023 Nasen Awards. For more information on the awards, visit https://nasen.org.uk/awards