Writing to you from the SEND, EAL and transition team I would like to update you on some projects we have completed and the changes happening for September.
We have run another successful coffee morning, reaching out to our SEND Key Stage 4 parents. Some of our subject leads also attended and distributed some key revision materials. We had in a guest speaker from Urban Devotion who was in to talk about teenager brains and how their emotional processing develops over those years. Next year we will be continuing these, hoping to reach out to all of our SEND parents through the year.
Some SEND parents will be coming in for their learning plan reviews for their child on the 15th July while other parents will be contacted to discuss how they have got on in the summer term with their key worker. We will continue this practice of trying to termly outreach in person to all of our SEND parents as this has really shown to help remove barriers for our students.
We have recent news of some new appointments as well. We have recruited two additional teaching assistants to start in September as we sadly say goodbye to Mrs Reynolds who has worked at the school for almost 30 years. She will be retiring at the end of September. If you would like to send any warm wishes in to Mrs Reynolds then please do. We have internally recruited Mrs Ivery to be the next support SENCo who has 27 years of experience of working with SEND and a wealth of experience for this role.
We have also made two new roles within the SEND team. One is Key Stage 3 lead and the other is Key Stage 4 lead. The Key Stage 3 lead will focus on parental engagement and transition for our new year 6 students, while the Key Stage 4 lead will focus on that cohort’s attainment and access to colleges. Mrs Cambridge will be the Key Stage 3 lead and Miss Jeffers will be the Key Stage 4 lead. We are extremely proud and pleased with these appointments. Miss Graham will be moving to be our lead practitioner for Physical and or Sensory needs, which will ensure fantastic support for those students as well.
We have been working with Middle Leaders this term as well to ensure that the curriculum we offer is adapted to meet the needs of all students. Ensuring that, for example, the knowledge is appropriately sequenced and repeated through units to support students with remembering and that homework positively supports students to practice key parts.
It has also been a busy term with supporting 3 Parental EHCP requests and 5 more SSPPs to get additional funded support for some of our most vulnerable learners. As ever, we will continue to advocate for the best and most appropriate support for our learners.
Our EAL team, led by Mr Johnson, have really outreached to colleges this term to try and get students inspired by their future. Mr Johnson also got our local MP in to engage with a refugee action project that our EAL students valuably contributed to. We took part in a national research project, led by 360 Degrees, looking at how to improve support for new EAL students. Next year, Mr Johnson has been given more time to run a bespoke programme of interventions to support our EAL learners and we look forward to seeing the impact of that.
We welcomed in our 180 year 6 students on the 6th July to lessons in Science, Music, Art, English and PE. Feedback from parents was really positive and the students had such a wonderful time. Mr Read has one more opportunity for this new cohort – summer school – which is taking part in the first week of the summer holidays. We have booked lots of fun sessions for this to get students working together and catching up on any Maths and English they have missed. The Head of Year, Miss Perry is looking forwarding to leading this year group.
From the SEND, EAL team and transition teams we wish you a fantastic summer.
Kind Regards,
Ms J Hunt
Assistant Principal
