Assessment of Students with a Special Educational Need and Disability (SEND)
Learning Ladders and SEND
Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) can affect a child's ability to learn. Most schools employ a specialist SEND co-ordinator, or SENCO to ensure that every child receives the support necessary to learn.
Children with a special educational need or disability may require:
- Assessment as an individual or as part of a smaller group
- Specific curriculum objectives outside of the mainstream academic year group objectives
- Additional observation or evidence collection to monitor progress
- More frequent and in depth communication with parents to share evidence of learning
Learning Ladders provides schools with the tools that support teachers and SENCO's to create bespoke curricula, monitor groups and individuals, record evidence of learning and communicate progress to parents.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Identify children with SEND in the system
Pupil Attributes can be used in the system to identify students with particular attributes for monitoring in reporting.
- Assign pupil attributes to your students with SEND by following the instructions here (admin users only)
2. Create a Group for monitoring children with SEND
Students will display in Classes& Groups in their registration classes.
SENCOs and teachers can utilise 'Groups' to create small groups of students with similar learning needs for entering assessments and monitoring in reporting.
Groups can be made up of just one pupil or multiple pupils, across any year group.
3. Create bespoke curriculum subjects, aspects and objectives for children with SEND
For children working on objectives outside of the academic year group curriculum objectives, specific objectives can be created.
All curriculum changes take place in the Creation Zone.
Each subject in your curriculum can have it's own unique expectations. Read about setting expectations here.- Once you have created your custom subject, you may need to contact the team for teachers to view and assess all students against these rungs.
4. Assess children against bespoke curriculum objectives
Teachers can select a class or group in 'Classes& Group' assessment. Once you have assigned children with SEND to a group, you can select the group, the specific subject you have created the supporting curriculum objectives in and rung year.
Teachers record assessments against the additional curriculum objectives created for their unique learning requirements in either Classes& Groups:
or students:
Teachers can upload evidence against assessments for moderation, progress meetings or to share progress with parents.
If Ladders at Home has been set-up, parents view the portfolio evidence and can choose to view, download or respond via two-way messaging.
5. View progress and attainment reports
In Assessment Summary teachers can select a group and subject (for example Speech& Language group and Speech& Language subject) and view the attainment and progress of the students in this group against the curriculum taught.
The reports can be filtered by SEN 'Show' or 'Hide'. 'Show' folds out into the different options for SEN:
The student can still be taught and assessed against the mainstream year group objectives and included in whole class reports. The teacher is able to filter the whole class report by SEN to 'Show' or 'Hide' and has the additional report created for the additional curricula put in place.
6. Share learning with students
Share the objectives from the custom subject with the students in the group you have created. Go to students> search student> view> pupil statements.
Select the custom subject, rung years and choose whether to include year groups against the objectives.
Share the aspects and objectives with the student, allowing students to take ownership over their learning. Read more about student statements here.
7. Share information with with parents
In the settings for sharing Learning Goals, select the custom subject. This will enable parents to view when their child has started or completed an objective from this custom subject. Read more about Learning Goals here.
Add the custom subject as an option in your termly/end of year reports and select this subject to report on for only the students taught and assessed against this subject. Find out more about student reports here.
Utilising the PKS subjects
The PKS stages were designed for assessment of students working below the overall standard of National Curriculum assessment but engaged in subject specific learning. They are designed to be used as an end of key stage summative assessment. Here is a DfE article explaining their use.
The intention of PKS is not to assess children against these stages throughout the key stage. You can create specific curriculum subjects for children with additional needs in the system.
You can add the PKS subjects to your curriculum in Ladder Bank> Select PKS Maths for example> Add subject to Creation Zone.
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