Inclusion

   Welcome to St Margaret's CofE Primary School Inclusion Page

My name is Mrs Carpenter and I am the SENCo (Special Needs Coordinator) and Designated Safeguarding Lead at the school. My job is to have an overview of everything which goes on for children at the school and ensure that all children feel safe, secure, included and successful. 

My priority for the school is to ensure that any provision which sits outside of High Quality Teaching (the term to describe best practice teaching in schools) is having an impact and enabling children to meet their learning and social goals.

I really value collaboration with parents/carers and enjoy working together to plan and review the support that we have on offer. 

If you have a child at the school and are concerned about their progress or happiness when they are here, please get in touch so that we can agree on the next steps to help your child succeed.

Please read our SEN policy and SEN Information Report (on our policies page) for more details on how we identify and support special educational needs.

Have a great day

Mrs Carpenter

Literacy Difficulties

The most common special educational need seen in many schools across the country is Specific Learning Difficulties. This refers to difficulties in one particular area of learning and most commonly this is literacy. Children may struggle to grasp the concept of phonics. They may find reading fluently very difficult to achieve or they might struggle with aspects of their writing such as spelling or grammar. In school we offer support in a variety of ways and there are also things that parents/carers can do to support this learning. 

Developing Motor Skills

In order to coordinate our body movements, we draw upon our gross motor (large body movements) and fine motor (small, detailed body movements) skills. Often we think of developing fine motor skills when we want to improve our handwriting and we think of our gross motor skills when learning to play a sport. Many activities actually require good development of both gross and fine motor skills. With handwriting in particular, it is important to remember that good posture and trunk strength improves our handwriting greatly. 

Speech and Language Difficulties

Speech and language difficulties are very common, particularly for children in reception or Year 1. Some children receive speech and language therapy outside of school and develop well. Others require ongoing support. As a school, we have expertise in supporting children with speech and language difficulties and work with children on targets set by the Speech and Language Therapist.

English as an Additional Language

We welcome and celebrate the diversity that children from different cultures and countries bring to the school. Those with English as an Additional Language (EAL) may be supported by the Ethnic Minority Achievement Service (EMAS). As a school, we have bought into a package of support from EMAS to ensure that our children with EAL are given the best possible start to school life with us and are supported to thrive.

Access for Those with Physical Disabilities

We are fortunate that our site and grounds are extremely accessible and allow for children with a range of physical needs to take part in all of the activities and learning opportunities that we offer. There is disabled access to all areas in the school and we are always working hard to consider ways of offering a wide range of opportunities to those who find physical tasks difficult. 

Autism

Click here to watch a Ted Talk from a young adult with autism discussing autism and how it frees her to be herself. 

Developing Inclusion

At St Margaret's, we are passionate about providing a quality education for ALL children and being entirely inclusive in our practice. On 14th Feb 2020 we dedicated a training day to working together to develop our inclusive practice. As a staff team, we identified the features of inclusion at St Margaret's. We also made pledges as teachers, teaching assistants and senior leaders about further developing inclusion at the school. 

We made some videos to share with you all.