Key things to know about SEND

This page provides key information for parents and carers about special educational needs and disabilities.

What are special educational needs and disabilities?

A child or young person has special educational needs if they have a learning difficulty or disability that calls for special educational provision to be made for them.

A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty or disability if they:

have significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age or
have a disability that stops or makes it difficult for them to make use of facilities generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions.

I think my child may have special educational needs - what should I do?

Speak with your child's class teacher or the special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) at your child's school.

You can also find lots of useful information on the SEND Local Offer.

What happens when my child is identified as having special educational needs?

If your child is identified as having a SEN, the school will follow a process called the graduated or SEN response.

Your child's school will follow a model identified in the SEN Code of Practice 2015 and the procedures will be included in the school's SEN policy, which can be found on their website and will help you understand the school's SEN process.

Graduated or SEN response

Hillingdon Council has developed the Ordinarily Available Provision document (PDF) [727KB], which explains the graduated approach and aims to ensure children and young people with identified special educational needs and disabilities are appropriately supported in their educational setting.

Where a pupil is identified as having SEN, schools should remove learning barriers and put effective special educational provision in place.

What is special educational provision?

Special educational provision is support that is additional to, or different from, the support that is normally available to children or young people of the same age.

SEN provision is designed to help children and young people access the National Curriculum at school or to study at college.

Education, Health and Care needs assessments

Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) are legal documents that describe how the special education, health or social care needs of a child or young person (aged 0 to 25-years-old) will be met.

Not all children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) will need an EHCP. To understand whether an EHCP would be helpful for a particular child or young person, the local authority will carry out an assessment.

Appeals and mediation

If you are unhappy with a decision made in relation to an Education Health and Care needs assessment or an Education Health and Care Plan, you can appeal.

Appeals are heard at a SEND tribunal - an independent national tribunal that hears parents' and young people's appeals against local authority decisions about the special educational needs of children and young people.

Whereas, mediation is a more informal way of trying to settle a dispute between a parent or young person and the local authority.

Watch this video to learn about hearings at the SEND tribunal.

Schools

Parents and young people have a legal right to request that a particular school or college is named in an education, health and care plan (or to express a preference for an independent school, college or other institution).

Transition

The term 'transition' can be used to describe any changes for a child with SEN, as they move into, within, between and out of educational settings.

Primary to secondary transition (PDF) [1017KB]
Moving On Up - the RSBC's online group for blind or partially-sighted children and young people who are in year 6 and preparing for the transition into year 7