Inclusive Practice

Target audience

Aimed at all practitioners and senior leaders looking for effective ways to engage pupils of all ages and their parents and carers in collaborative planning and reviewing of progress and wider outcomes for learners with SEND and other additional needs.

Overview

The SEND Code of Practice (2015) demands responsibility and accountability from the class teacher for the SEND provision and outcomes within that class. This course aims to empower all staff to liaise, plan and review with pupils and parents in a way which makes school processes truly accessible, and reduces some of challenges faced by practitioners in pupil and parent voice. With the application of a few simple strategies, schools can meet and exceed the requirements of the SEND Code of Practice (2015) and promote genuine choice and control for children, young people and their parents and carers.

Course presenters

• Jayne Worrall
• Zena Martin

Target audience

Aimed at all classroom teachers, SENCOS and Inclusion Managers.

Overview

November 2015’s DfE publication, ‘Supporting the attainment of disadvantaged pupils: Briefing for school leaders’, detailing research conducted by NFER and Durham University, highlights the need for high quality teaching for all as one of the seven building blocks for increasing school effectiveness for disadvantaged pupils. The document states, ‘Leaders of more successful schools emphasise the importance of quality teaching first.’ The SEND Code of Practice (2015) also places a renewed emphasis on quality first teaching for all children, aimed at both reducing the number of children requiring Special Educational Provision, and ensuring that those with SEND are taught alongside their peers. This raises many questions for practitioners. How can this be achieved when the gaps in children’s learning can be so wide? What does quality first teaching look like now that we are so accustomed to teaching through interventions? This course explores what inclusive practice can look like for children with cognition and learning difficulties and, indeed, for all underachieving children.

Course presenters

• Jayne Worrall
• Zena Martin

​Target audience

Teaching assistants

This course is also very effective for whole school staff to develop consistent understanding of TA deployment

Overview

There are now around 250,000 teaching assistants in English schools. This represents around treble the number that existed in 2000 (EEF, 2016). In primary schools, there are more teaching assistants than teachers. Unlike teachers, however, the roles, responsibilities and preparatory training for this are extremely wide and varied. Unlike teachers, there is no common qualification or body of study that all teaching assistants must have before they can embark on their role. Yet despite training for teaching assistants being very patchy and varied, schools across England expect them to be firmly on the frontline of learning and teaching. Yet research from the Education Endowment Foundation (2016) has highlighted that without strong and effective training and deployment, teaching assistants can have very little positive impact on pupil progress – a bitter pill to swallow for any hard-working teaching assistant. However, the researchers do not point any blame at teaching assistants for this situation, but identify conditions of employment, preparedness and deployment as the ingredients that either help or hinder them from achieving good practice.

This course does not claim to provide all the training a teaching assistant will ever need – certainly not in one session! But it is a very helpful introduction to the fundamentals of learning for new teaching assistants, whilst also being a very thought-provoking reflection for those more experienced. It is not subject-specific, but addresses the more rooted questions around how children learn and how they fail. It addresses how we can use skillful questioning to lift the lid on children’s learning, and how we can use practical strategies to encourage independent learners. This is about exploring the role of teaching assistants at the point of interaction with children. I hope it forms an interesting part in a much wider professional development journey.

Course presenters

• Jayne Worrall
• Zena Martin

Target audience

Primarily teaching assistants, but is more effective if there is whole school involvement

Please note that this course follows directly from Teaching Assistants on the Frontline of Learning (see details above), and cannot be delivered separately. Ideally, it is more effective to have a gap of a few weeks between the two courses to give delegates opportunity to reflect and feedback on classroom experiences.​

Course presenters

• Jayne Worrall
• Zena Martin

Target audience

Primary teaching assistants

Overview

This course highlights strong multi-sensory language strategies to support phonics and spelling, as well as looking at structured ways to engage in reading with children, both individually and through a guided reading experience.

Please note that this course follows directly from Teaching Assistants on the Frontline of Learning (see details above), and cannot be delivered separately. Ideally, it is more effective to have a gap of a few weeks between the two courses to give delegates opportunity to reflect and feedback on classroom experience.

Course presenters

• Jayne Worrall
• Zena Martin

Target audience

Primary class teachers, new and experienced

Training primary teachers

Overview

The Carter review of Initial Teacher Training (2015) highlighted how little emphasis was given to the area of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in the diet of many training teachers. Colleagues new to the profession repeatedly talk of how little time was given in their training to this area. This course is based on the premise that excellent provision for pupils with SEND starts from a Quality First Teaching basis. Equally, good Quality First Teaching starts from addressing the needs of those who might it most difficult to learn. We examine what is required and expected of teachers in the Code of Practice, what causes some children to struggle with learning in the classroom, particularly those external barriers to learning that can present in the environment. We explore a range of practical teaching and learning strategies that can help teachers reduce and eliminate many of those barriers, and start to appreciate when Quality First Teaching requires some reasonable adjustments. The message given is that inclusive classrooms don’t have to be difficult to create or hard to manage, that if you can facilitate successful progress in pupils with SEND, you are likely to be seeing good progress from the rest of your class, and that high expectations of pupils with SEND are the crucial underpinning of success.

Course presenters

• Jayne Worrall
• Zena Martin