Guidance and policies about SEN and disability

Local guidance and policies

SEN support guidance is written for schools and settings and parents. The guidance is designed to help schools to identify a child’s special educational needs, the level of support they offer, and how to arrange and monitor the support given. It also sets out expectations of what they must offer for the funding they receive. These materials can be used to aid discussion between parents and teachers to ensure that children and young peoples’ needs are accurately identified. This information is also designed to help parents / carers understand the support their child might receive.

• Oxfordshire Guidance for Special Educational Needs (SEN) Support - Early Years (docx format, 293Kb)
• Guidance for Schools (pdf format, 894Kb)
• Guidance on Educating Children with an EHC Plan Out of Year Group in Mainstream Schools (pdf format, 61Kb)
• Education of Children and Young people who are unable to Attend School due to Medical Needs (pdf format, 316Kb)
• Reintegration timetable revised guidance (pdf format, Kb)
• Reintegration timetable proforma (docx format, Kb)
• Learner Engagement Strategy for Oxfordshire (pdf format, 785Kb)
• Literacy difficulties policy and advice (docx format, 2Mb)
  Guidance for schools on supporting children and young people with literacy difficulties
• Oxfordshire’s Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Sufficiency of Places Strategy (pdf format, 984kb)
  In December 2018 Cabinet approved the county council’s strategy to deliver sufficient SEND provision.  The strategy focuses on the five-year period 2018-2022, but also looks beyond to the following five-year period to 2027. Progress against the strategy will be reviewed annually and the strategy updated as required.
• Toileting and personal care policy (pdf format, 350Kb)
  Guidance for schools and settings on including children with personal care needs
• Reading comprehension (pdf format, 2.7Mb)
  Guidance for schools on reading comprehension skills
• Special Provision Fund – Capital Investment
• Schools Accessibility Strategy (pdf format, 1.3Mb)
  Schools and education authorities have a duty to provide reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils, originally under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and more recently under the Equality Act 2010. This strategy helps school leaders, disabled students and their parents understand the reasonable adjustments duty and includes examples of good practice.  Within this strategy is an Accessibility Strategy Toolkit (pdf format, 425Kb) which any school can use
  Information about the Department for Education Special Provision Fund and how this is being used in Oxfordshire to create additional places and improve facilities for pupils with SEND.

Special Provision Fund

The Government has committed capital funding to help local authorities create new school places and improve existing facilities for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). In March 2017 the Department for Education (DfE) announced the Special Provision Fund (SPF) with £215m of capital funding for 2018 to 2021. In May 2018 a further £50m was announced and in December 2018, a further £100m.

The formula for the allocating this funding to local authorities was based principally on projected numbers for children and young people age 2-18 between the years 2018/19 and 2020/21. Oxfordshire's share of the Special Provision Fund will be paid to the County Council between 2018 and 2020.

Before receiving the first allocation of SPF grant all local authorities were required to:

1. Work with education providers to agree how the capital funding can best be targeted.

Oxfordshire County Council established a High Needs Review Steering Group to review the provision for children and young people with SEND. This Steering Group included representatives from the county’s special and mainstream schools and was one key mechanism through which education providers were consulted. Through working with the Steering Group, as well as directly with schools, a draft plan for how this funding would be invested was developed.

2. Consult with parents and carers of children with SEN and disabilities and young people with SEN and disabilities.

An open consultation was held between 25 January and 22 February 2018 to allow all those with an interest in provision for children and young people with SEND to feed back their views on the proposed plan

3. Publish a plan on their local offer page showing how they intend to invest their funding.

To qualify for the funding, the DfE provided a template plan to be completed and publish by the local authority no later than 14 March 2018.  Subsequent funding announcements have required that this plan be updated.

Proposals for utilising the Special Provision Fund allocation in Oxfordshire were approved by the Cabinet Member for Public Health and Education at the delegated decisions meeting held 7 March 2018. Read the cabinet report.

In December 2018 Cabinet approved Oxfordshire County Council’s strategy to deliver sufficient SEND provision, Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Sufficiency of Places Strategy (pdf format, 984kb).  This strategy focuses on the five-year period 2018-2022 and also looks beyond to the following five-year period to 2027. Progress against the strategy will be reviewed annually and the strategy updated as required.

A copy of the council’s Oxfordshire’s published plan for investing the SPF grant includes details of all the Council’s capital investment proposals to increase the provision of school places for children with SEND between 2017/18 – 2020/21.

The plan has been updated to reflect the council’s adopted Special Educational Needs and Disability Sufficiency of Places Strategy and the additional SPF capital allocations announced by the Government since the programme was first launched. The plan also includes details other capital investment being provided by the council.

The investment proposals are in chronological order with the Special Provision Fund proposals towards the bottom of the list.

• Special Provision Fund Capital Plan (pdf format, 157kb)
• Special Provision Fund Outputs (pdf format, 106kb)

National guidance

• Code of Practice for SEND 2014
  Sets out how to put the 2014 SEN and Disability reforms into practice.
• Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions 2015
• Exclusion from maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units
  This is the guidance that those who make decisions about exclusions have to follow.
• Reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils 2012
• Mental health and behaviour in schools
  Advice on how to identify and support children and young people in school whose behaviour suggests that they may have unmet mental health needs.
• Preparing for adulthood
  Supports the government’s goal to help young people with SEN or disability succeed in learning, work and life.
• Help if you have a disabled child