SEND

Our school is part of The Kemnal Academies Trust and our purpose is to work together as a community of schools to ensure that every child, whatever their background, receives a high quality education.

Our vision and ambition is for a community of learners who share the mindset of success and are driven by the prospect of opportunity for all.  An environment of aspiration, respect and openness, enabling staff and students to thrive.

Our values are a Shared Voice, Shared belief and Shared Success.

Our overriding aim is that children who are most in need will have barriers removed and needs fully supported. Our objective is to provide an education to  all pupils, that is appropriate to their needs, maximises their educational development and enables them to make progress so that they:

• Achieve their best
• Become confident individuals living fulfilling lives
• Make a successful transition into adulthood, whether into employment, further or higher education or training

In this regard we will do our best to secure the necessary provision for any pupil who has a Special Educational Need and/or disability, within the limitations of our resources. The Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice January 2015 states that:

“A child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty or disability if he or she has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age, or has a disability which prevents or hinders him or her from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions.” 

To view our SEND policy, please visit our policies page.

The Elsa Centre

The ASD Resource Provision - The Elsa Centre (TEC) provides a welcoming, safe, supportive and flexible learning environment. TEC has become a setting where the associated students feel a positive attachment and ownership. TEC provides for small group adapted ‘mainstream teaching’ and withdrawal for interventions. The Provision creates daily opportunities for students to integrate into mainstream subject lessons and anticipates that students, where appropriate, will attend mainstream lessons with shared support or independently, and negotiate the school building, corridors, and unstructured times with some independence. TEC students are very much part of the Welling School community. TEC staff are aware of acknowledging and supporting the social communication, emotional needs and sensory challenges that are unique to each individual student. Parents have provided feedback about positive changes since their young person has had access to TEC.

Referrals, for the ASD Resource Provision (The Elsa Centre) at Welling School, will come from the Local Authority and Welling School will assess, through the consultation process, whether it can meet the individual students' needs.

Welling School to ensure that the following criteria are met :

• Age Range: Year 7 – Year 13
• Must have an EHC plan
• Autism must be their primary need as stated on their EHC plan section B.
• Students for whom their Autism is a significant barrier to their performance, and whose needs and challenges cannot be met entirely from resources available to and from mainstream school.
• Formal and informal assessments should indicate that students are working within the ‘broadly average range’ eg engaging with their environment; retaining information.
• Should indicate potential to achieve expected levels of progress in line with expectations in KS2 and GCSE in English and Maths at KS4.
• Students will have the ability to verbally communicate without full reliance on communication aids, although may still need support and programmes devised by a Speech and Language Therapist (SALT).

Admission will not be agreed if :

• The agreed number of funded places by the Local Authority is fully subscribed and admitting children over this number would be incompatible with the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources.
• There is evidence of severe or complex learning difficulties in addition to Autism.
• There is significant incompatibility with other students - Welling School will not be able to offer a place if there is good evidence that admitting a child is likely to have a detrimental impact on any other student’s wellbeing.   

Read, Write, Inc

Read, Write Inc is a valuable addition to the support students at Welling as it enables reading ages to increase which, in turn, allows our students to access texts across the curriculum. Both Kay and Sally are excellent practitioners who, through their teaching, improve students' self esteem and build confidence in reading a variety of texts. This programme is designed to increase the reading age of students and has proven itself time and time again.

English Teacher/Lead Practitioner of SEND

Read, write, inc is one of the best programmes I have seen in schools!  When delivered right it completely changes students’ lives.  So many students have benefited from this.  Students that were mute are able to speak.  Students that were unable to write a full sentence are writing novels.  Students that could not read aloud are now reading to mass audiences.  I am so grateful, as are students, parents and all staff of the positive impact this has had on their lives.

Read, Write Inc. – Fresh Start Modules

“The Fresh Start modules are specially written to help students to catch up on and develop their reading and writing skills. Each module contains a fiction or non-fiction text and a range of comprehension and writing activities which provide practice in the sounds and graphemes taught in the phonics lessons. Writing activities include progressive tasks to improve grammar, spelling and proofreading skills. The repetitive routine of each lesson can also aid memory.”

RWI has many of the factors that literacy specialists recommend.

• Pre-teaches unfamiliar vocabulary before reading the text 
• Students repeatedly read the text to improve fluency and understanding and confidence.
• Phonic knowledge is progressively taught throughout the modules and constantly repeated to aid memory recall.
• Frequent/sight words are constantly repeated to reinforce memory and spelling 
• Oral questioning sessions precede written questions and answers to check knowledge and understanding.
• Students are given time to write accurately, and to understand and correct errors.
• Written tasks increase in difficulty starting with re-writing the text with pictures as memory aids.
• Written tasks include writing instructions, diaries, leaflets, adverts, newspaper articles and letters in the programme’s later modules.

RWI sessions provide a space to learn in a safe, unpressured environment. Improved reading skills and having the strategies to read better everywhere, improves self confidence in reading and self-esteem in general. Depending on need students may need to be in the programme for anything from a few months to over a year.

Miss Hyslop and Mrs Kirkpatrick have been teaching Read, Write Inc for over 15 years, having training to update their skills as the programme has progressed. The programme has worked well for all SEND students as well as EAL. It also boosts the reading skills, fluency and understanding of struggling readers of all ages.

Students have told us:

“I love coming to intervention”

“This is the only place I feel comfortable reading”

“Read, Write Inc has changed my life”