What is special educational needs and disabilities mean?

Special educational needs (“SEN”) can affect a child or young person’s ability to learn.

For example, someone’s SEN might affect their:

• Reading and writing, for example because they may have dyslexia

• Ability to understand things

• Behaviour or ability to socialise, for example they struggle to make friends or play alongside others.

• Concentration is often hard due to processing speeds or that they have sensory difficulties

• They may take longer to learn than there peers



1. Do they have a learning difficulty or disability?

A child of compulsory school age or young person has a learning difficulty or disability if:

• They have significantly greater difficulty in learning than there peers

• They have a disability which makes it difficult for them to use the facilities normally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or post-16 institutions.

• Someone has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
  

2. Does that learning difficulty or disability call for special educational provision to be made?

For children aged 2 or more years and young people, special educational provision is any educational or training provision that is additional to, or different from, that made generally for other children or young people of the same age. There is a wide scope of needs however, for example:

• Having materials provided in a larger font, Vision impairments

• Needing one-to-one support

• Communicating through PECS,Makaton or BSL due to hearing

• Pathway to Autism Spectrum Disorder

• Speech and language delay, Developmental language

• needing 1-1 support or small class sizes

• being held back by school or in a different year group to children/young people their age

• Behavioural difficulties

Some children or young people may need additional support which is not special educational provision; for example they might need certain treatments or medicines administered at school because of a medical condition they have. In order to be classed as having SEN, they must need something educational in nature or training which is different from that given to other children or young people of the same age.

Is your child (of any age) or young person is receiving health care provision or social care provision, which educates or trains them in some way. If it does, then this provision is considered special educational provision. for example, speech and language therapy or occupational therapy.

If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then the child or young person has SEN.

Children and young people with SEN are entitled to extra support with learning at nursery, school or college.

I hope the above imformation is clear and helps all to understand neurodiversty.