HSAEL News

Supporting Students with SEND

If you were building a house, would you wait until you’ve moved in to see if there were any cracks in the foundation? Would you wait until you were washing dishes to see if there were any leaky pipes? Would you put up walls in one bedroom, but leave the other bedrooms open to the elements until Spring?

Of course, not; and yet, this is how most schools approach SEND (Special Education Needs and Disabilities).

The problem with this is, schools will continue to build and plug gaps without realising that their initial blueprint is not working for everyone. This means that students with SEND are often left behind. Across the U.K., students with special education needs are some of the most educationally disadvantaged in the school system, making over a grade less than their target grades, while their peers are achieving at or above their targets. Other schools’ response to this is put ‘quick fixes’ or attempt to plug gaps with blanket interventions or withdrawals from lessons. They are waiting to move in to find the cracks in the foundation.

At HSAEL, we know this doesn’t work. In fact, it is likely the reason that the gap continues to widen.
Instead of quick fixes, plugging gaps, and adapting models to suit concerns after the fact, when we designed our whole school teaching provision, we built the foundations to meet the needs of our SEND pupils first. We base our teacher development in evidence and research here. We know that the most powerful intervention is excellent teaching. SEND students’ needs should be primarily met in the classroom, taught by a well-trained, highly effective subject experts. Our staff our trained every week to deliver high quality teaching, and we see the evidence in our SEND students’ books and in their assessment outcomes. Our blueprint is prepared for the move-in date.

We have a culture of high expectations for all pupils, as well as a positive and proactive approach to behaviour. All our students are expected to follow our LEADERS model, which is founded on student engagement and participation in lessons. This approach supports students who may be otherwise disengaged from learning. In a classroom, this will look like 100% engagement with clicks and shakes, tracking the speaker, loud and careful articulation. For our SEND students, this will become active participation and tactile support which supports varying needs. We test the pipes before we wash the dishes.

All students need consistency and calm in order to be successful; this approach has a disproportionately positive impact on students with SEND. The HSAEL lesson structure means that students have a routine, know what the expectations are when they enter a classroom, and are given high levels of predictability. This supports all students, but has a huge impact on the focus and engagement of our SEND students. We put up the walls in every part of the house, so no one is left in the cold.

We have a robust identification system, one lauded by Ofsted. Through this system, we can provide specialist and external provision if a student needs further support. We insulate the house we are building.

The results speak for themselves:  while provision for all students has improved rapidly over the last two years, SEND students are making even faster progress, with any gaps closing quickly. In Computer Science, we have eradicated the SEND gap. 

The house we have built at HSAEL will ensure that every student secures the best possible outcomes and becomes a leader in their chosen field. It is baked into our very foundations.