Special Needs

What should I do if my child has a special educational need and how can I get the support my child needs?

These pages are intended as a free aid to parents or carers who are concerned their child may have, or may be developing, special educational needs.

Resources You Might Find Helpful

The Most Common Areas of Special Educational Need

My Background

Click on the links below for more information on each topic

This page is in development. More to follow

Jargon Buster

What makes me able to talk about special educational needs (SEN)?

I'm a qualified teacher. Apart from my first degree and a PGCE, I have an Advanced Diploma in SEN from the Institute of Education, a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychology (including child development), and a Master's degree in Psychology. More important than all that, I put in many years as a subject teacher and subsequently gained 17 years' experience in schools as a special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO), special needs teacher and Inclusion Manager, as well as a spell as an advisory teacher supporting staff in other schools. I've also taken numerous short courses in areas of SEN such as language acquisition, reading development, language development, oracy, numeracy, ASD & autism, child counselling, ADHD and more. I generally know what I'm talking about.

This is what the Code of Practice on special educational needs says: "A child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability that calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her ... a child of compulsory school age has a learning difficulty or disability if he or she has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age or has a disability which prevents or hinders him or her from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age." SEND Code of Practice 2014, introduction, paras xiii-xiv, pp 15 and 16

Note: you will find two terms generally in use in the field of special needs. SEN (Special Educational Needs) and SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disability). These terms are mostly used interchangeably.

What is a Special Educational Need and what do people mean when they talk about special needs?