Ensuring the inclusion of all our learners
In our school, we aim to offer excellence and choice to all our children, whatever their ability or needs. We have high expectations of all our children. We aim to achieve this through the removal of barriers to learning and participation. We want all our children to feel that they are a valued part of our school community. Through appropriate curricular provision, we respect the fact that children:
- have different educational and behavioural needs and aspirations;
- require different strategies for learning;
- acquire, assimilate and communicate information at different rates;
- need a range of different teaching approaches and experiences.
Teachers respond to children’s needs by:
- providing support for children who need help with communication, language and literacy;
- planning to develop children’s understanding through the use of all their senses and of varied experiences;
- planning for children’s full participation in learning, and in physical and practical activities;
- helping children to manage their behaviour and to take part in learning effectively and safely;
- helping individuals to manage their emotions, particularly trauma or stress, and to take part in learning.
Admissions to Home Farm Primary School, including admissions of children with Special Educational Needs and Disability are handled by Essex County Council.
You can find more details of our approach in our Inclusion Policy:
You can find details about accessibility in our Equality Plan:
Special Educational Needs and Disability
This school provides a broad and balanced curriculum for all children. The National Curriculum is our starting point for planning that meets the specific needs of individuals and groups of children. When planning, teachers set suitable learning challenges and respond to children’s diverse learning needs. Some children have barriers to learning that mean they have special needs and require particular action by the school.
The aims and objectives of our approach to Special Educational Needs and Disability are:
- to create an environment that meets the special educational needs of each child;
- to ensure that the special educational needs of children are identified, assessed and provided for;
- to make clear the expectations of all partners in the process;
- to identify the roles and responsibilities of staff in providing for children’s special educational needs;
- to enable all children to have full access to all elements of the school curriculum;
- to ensure that parents or carers are able to play their part in supporting their child’s education;
- to ensure that our children have a voice in this process.
Throughout Essex all schools offer very similar provision for pupils with SEND in line with the County’s Information Report. You can find out more about the Essex Local Offer on the Essex County SEND website. Home Farm Primary School’s provision is set out in our SEND information report.
More able pupils
We believe in providing the best possible provision for pupils of all abilities. We plan our teaching and learning so that each child can aspire to the highest level of personal achievement. The purpose of this policy is to help to ensure that we recognise and support the needs of those children in our school who have been identified as ‘gifted’ or ‘talented’ according to national guidelines.
Our aims are to:
- ensure that we recognise and support the needs of all our children;
- enable children to develop to their full potential;
- offer children opportunities to generate their own learning;
- ensure that we challenge and extend the children through the work that we set them;
- encourage children to think and work independently.
You can find more details of our approach to managing provision for more able pupils in our Inclusion Policy.
English as an additional language
A number of our children have particular requirements with regard to learning and assessment, and these are linked to their progress in learning English as an additional language. Children who are learning English as an additional language have linguistic skills similar to those of mono-lingual English-speaking children. Their ability to participate in the full curriculum may well be in advance of their current ability to communicate in English.
Being a speaker of more than one language is no disadvantage to educational achievement; indeed, multilingualism is associated with success. This school recognises the importance of community languages in their own right, and the ability of their speakers to acquire other languages.
Underlying the National Curriculum is the entitlement of all children to access certain areas of learning, and thereby to acquire the knowledge, the understanding, the skills and the attitudes that are necessary not only for their self-fulfilment, but also for their development as responsible citizens. We seek to honour this entitlement through the education that we provide in our school.
You can find further details of our provision for children who are learning English as an Additional Language in our Inclusion Policy.