SEND: How to Get Support from your Staff

This blog is based on Judicium’s SEND ‘Sofa Session’ from the 25th of January, with our resident expert Rik Chilvers. This session focused on the role of CPD, working with other leaders, and enabling effective partnerships.

Poll 1

The most successful SENDCOs are those that work exceedingly well with school colleagues and external peers and stakeholders, which is why we are focusing on how you or your SENDCO can effectively work with these partners.

This collaborative working is important for several reasons. First, as the Code of Practice notes, a whole-school approach to supporting children with SEND is the most effective way to meet your ambitious targets for their progress.

Secondly, we know that Ofsted considers SEND when making judgements in all four areas of an inspection: leadership and management, quality of education, personal development and behaviour and attitudes. There should, therefore, be a golden thread of SEND running throughout all areas of your school. Just like safeguarding, SEND is everyone's responsibility.

Leadership

We conducted a survey last November as part of the launch of our new SEND service. It showed just under two-fifths of SENDCOs aren't on SLT. Considering the level of leadership required to effectively coordinate SEND provision in a school, it’s arguable the Code of Practice doesn't go far enough when it says, "They will be most effective in that role if they are part of the school leadership team."

This may be an issue because successful leadership is crucial to improving the outcomes of all children.

For SEND specifically, a 2011 report from the National College for School Leadership identified management and leadership to be one of four key organisational conditions associated with promoting the achievement of children with SEND, along with culture and ethos, practice and structures and systems. They note that successful leaders, "encourage teamwork and collaborative problem-solving."

The Role of CPD 

If leadership is one side of the 'improving educational outcomes' coin, quality of teaching is the other (Hattie, 2003) and CPD is one of the most effective tools you have to develop this. In fact, the DfE goes further and argues how effective professional development should be seen as a key driver not only of staff development, but also of recruitment, retention, wellbeing, and school improvement. Therefore, it’s vital you get it right.

The Code of Practice (paragraph 6.4) states:

The quality of teaching for pupils with SEN, and the progress made by pupils, should be a core part of the school’s performance management arrangements and its approach to professional development for all teaching and support staff.

Top Tip: Directly link CPD to performance management targets. This way staff must be proactive in identifying and attending relevant CPD as one of their targets.

Effective CPD

Looking again at Ofsted and the Code of Practice for an example of why effective CPD is important, Ofsted want to see that children with SEND have access to the whole curriculum and that careful assessment and planning means it is impactful. The Code of Practice makes clear that one of the ways this can be achieved is through early identification of SEND. This means your staff need to be trained and proficient in using referral processes, being curious about children's barriers to learning and knowledgeable about the broad areas of SEND.

Outside of the world of education in schools, researchers have investigated the 'transfer of training' in workplaces to judge how effective it's been. As you might imagine, there are many parallels between effective training of adults and effective teaching of children. Key questions to consider regarding your training are:

• Do staff have the necessary prior skills and knowledge to access the training?
• Do they understand why the training is important?
• Have you been clear about how staff should use the training and the expected impact?
• Are staff motivated to apply the training?
• Is the training designed in such a way that it could be easily transferred into practice?

The most successful training that we have seen closely mirrors excellent teaching practices. For example:

• Deliberate practice
  • Focusing in on the constituent parts of a skill before building them up into the whole.
• Modelling and scenarios
  • These are particularly effective if you're training your staff how to work with specific students.
• Error correcting activities
• Error management activities where your staff have opportunity anticipate what could go wrong and then collaborate on problem solving strategies

A great example came from a school we worked with that utilised a system where any staff, whatever their experience, who was observed putting effective strategies into practice was asked to demonstrate it at training or lead a training session in a carousel. This not only validated the work of these staff, but also raised the perceived utility of the training because staff could see that it was effective in practice.

Another effective CPD practice is the use of frequent, regular short briefings and quizzes that revise and test key knowledge throughout the school year. We often find by the second half term staff have forgotten the previous INSET training. Regular top-ups and tests are effective at keeping the profile of SEND high.

Working With Other School Leaders

You can also ensure your training transfers into practice, foster that 'training culture' and keep SEND at the forefront of people's minds by working with other leaders.

Leithwood, Harris and Hopkins (2019) found, "school leadership can have an especially positive influence on ... outcomes when it is distributed". In fact, "teachers reported being more strongly committed to the school if informal leadership responsibilities were distributed or shared by patterns of expertise" (ibid.).

A great example of this is holding a weekly multi-team meeting which brings together leads for attendance, behaviour, SEND, mental and physical health, safeguarding and pastoral to review referrals and ongoing cases. This will provide the SENDCO regular opportunities to model the type of thinking they apply when considering children's needs and to informally upskill their colleagues on some more specific areas of SEND knowledge.

Another successful strategy we’ve seen in secondary schools is TAs being assigned to departments rather than working with children across a range of lessons. With the right training for those TAs, this gives the SENDCO excellent insight into the adaptations and provision happening in these departments without them needing to conduct frequent learning walks (though those are still important!). This works well when SENDCOs regularly meet with heads of department to review the practice in their area.

Enabling Effective Partnerships

Section 3 of the Code of Practice - Working together across education, health and care for joint outcomes - asks us to consider, "whether and how specialist staff can train the wider workforce so they can better identify need and offer support earlier."

An example of this could be your SENDCO working with your Speech and Language Therapist (SaLT) and their team lead to train 'Communication Champions' in each department. This can involve some group sessions as well as lesson study throughout the year. Champions work with their team to raise the profile of children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), observe their peers and provide feedback on best practices and effective strategies.

 

Poll 2

 

External Agencies

It's also good practice to invite representatives of all the external agencies you work with, e.g., SaLT, Educational Psychology, Occupational Therapy, youth workers, Specialist Teachers, etc., to join your strategic planning meetings. These are sometimes called Team Around the School meetings. It's important to involve these stakeholders as much as possible.

Parents and Carers

In their report, Leithwood, Harris and Hopkins (2019) identify that, "school leadership improves teaching and learning, indirectly and most powerfully ... [in part by] by encouraging parent/child interactions in the home that further enhance student success at school". It is important parents are comprehensively involved. There's no need to invite them to SLT meetings, but they should be invited to events like coffee mornings to hear about strategies to effectively support their children and contribute to reviews of your SEND Information Report.

Getting your parents on side in this way can also smooth their relationships with class and subject teachers, further improving their buy-in and the support they provide you.

Final takeaways

• Get buy in from your staff through well-planned and regularly revisited CPD topics.
• Link CPD and performance management.
• Work closely and strategically with your external professionals.
• Support parents/carers so they can support you.

 

If you require any SEND support in any of these steps or would like to talk to someone surrounding our SEND Support Service for your school, please do not hesitate to call us on 0345 548 7000 or email georgina.decosta@judicium.com

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