Inclusion & SEND
The school has an exceptionally inclusive and welcoming approach to overcoming challenges and supporting the needs of all pupils.
At Hildenborough CE Primary School, we are proud to be an inclusive environment, welcoming children with a range of learning and physical disabilities to our school. We are fully committed to ensuring all pupils, regardless of their background, additional educational needs, race or gender, are able to fulfil their potential and strive to ensure our classrooms cater for all need types, through outstanding classroom practice and informed methods that enable all children to succeed academically, socially and emotionally.
In September 2014, a new Special Educational Needs (SEN) Code of Practice came into effect. Under the new Code of Practice, a child is deemed to have Special Educational Needs, or SEN, if he or she has, 'significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age' or his or her disability, 'prevents or hinders him or her from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in a mainstream school'.
Our Ethos
At Hildenborough CE Primary School, we believe everyone plays a part in a child’s development and are committed to working alongside parents, children and other agencies to ensure we do everything we can to remove barriers to learning and enable every child to reach their full potential.
In order to ensure our everyday classroom practice is as inclusive as possible, we welcome suggestions and recommendations from outside agencies, with whom we work closely. We are also readily available to parents to discuss any concern that they may have, even before a child starts school, as we believe in early identification so that the right support can be put in place. We have clear plans to support children and provide parents with details of these. We run a range of targeted interventions and support groups, which are closely monitored to ensure they are making an impact on a child’s learning and wellbeing, but believe that children are best supported by outstanding classroom practice and quality first teaching.
Kent County Council set out the provision available across the county for children with SEND, called the “local offer”. Please click here to read more about the Local Offer. At Hildenborough CE Primary School, we adhere to Kent County Council's Mainstream Core Standards, which set out the duties of schools in meeting the needs of pupils with SEND.
The SEND Team
Our SEN Co-ordinator (SENCO) is Mrs Rachel Forward and she has the responsibility of co-ordinating special educational needs within the school.
Mrs Forward is closely supported by Mrs Caroline Stone, our Inclusion Manager, who has a wide knowledge of SEND and a specific specialism in Therapeutic Play Therapy. The school also employs a number of Teaching Assistants, some of whom work 1:1 with specific children.
If you have any questions regarding the SEND provision at Hildenborough CE Primary School, then please contact the SEN team via the Enquiry Form.
Information Report
Every school must publish an SEN information report about the SEN provision the school makes. You can find our SEND Policy and Information Report linked below. If you have any questions relating to this, you can contact your child's class teacher or the SEND team.
Parent Support
We have created a Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Padlet (which is a bit like an online post it wall), as a way of sharing useful SEND information, websites, resources and books for home and school. We appreciate how difficult and time consuming it can be to trawl the internet looking for quality information and resources so we hope this will alleviate some of that challenge for you. We will be continually adding to the Padlet and would love it if you could share with us anything you think would be particularly useful to have on there, be it things you'd like us to source or things you've already used and think could be useful for others.
You can find the Padlet using the following link: https://padlet.com/batesrachel92/hildenborough-ce-primary-school-s-send-for-parents-1d3gjdk375idb8au
The Information Advisory Service Kent (IASK) is an invaluable resource to parents. IASK support families of children with special needs or disabilities. They hope to empower young people and their parents to make informed choices about their education and communicate confidently their views. Information about how they may be able to help can be found on their website here, alongside some really helpful downloads about SEND across Kent.
Click on the documents below to see all policies relating to inclusion, including the SEND Policy, SEND Information Report, Accessibility Plan and Medical Needs Policy, as well as links to the Mainstream Core Standards and Kent's SEND Strategy.