SENCO and SEN Staff
Our SENDCo is Mrs N Soppitt. Her contact details can be found via the school website.
Mrs Soppitt holds the National Award for Special Educational Needs Coordination (NASENCo) qualification.
Mrs Soppitt also holds a Post Graduate Certificate (PGCert) in Specific Learning Difficulty, in addition to other teaching qualifications.
More details of the SENCO’s role can be found in the SEN Policy which you can find in the School Policies section of our website.
External Specialists and Other Bodies
The school enjoys good working relationships with a wide range of people who provide services to children with SEND and their families.
The external specialists may:
- Act in an advisory capacity
- Extend expertise of school staff
- Provide additional assessment
- Support a child directly
- Suggest statutory assessment is advisable
- Consult with all parties involved with the child
These include:
- Durham County Council Local Offer
- Durham SEND Information, Advice and Support Service
- Bishop Auckland One Point Hub
- Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service
- Learning Disability Services
- Speech and Language Therapy
- Autism Spectrum Disorder and Communication Difficulties Team
- Behaviour Support Service
- Crisis Response Team
- Hearing Impairment Team
- Educational and Psychological Consultants
- NHS agencies, such as Occupational Therapy
- School Nurse Service
- Durham Movement Difficulties Service
- Early Help Support for Families
How We Secure Specialist Expertise
The budget allocation is agreed between our school and the Local Authority at the beginning of each financial year. Details of how this money is used to support children and young people with SEND is shown below. This is monitored each term by the Governing Body.
Our Additional Needs Budget is used to support children and young people with SEN. In 2021/22, this amount is £72, 271.
This is used to support children and young people with SEND by:
- Appointment of teaching staff to ensure that our class sizes remain small, enabling teachers to give focused support to children with SEND.
- Appointment of support staff who deliver specialised programmes of support to children requiring these.
- Training for staff to enable delivery of support sessions.
- Purchasing of specialised resources relating to support programs.
- Purchase of screening services such as additional assessment from services and support time.
- Purchase of specialised resources for individual children, based on presenting needs.
- Purchas or adaptation of current resources to enable children to access Quality First Teaching.
If a child has complex special educational needs, we could also receive additional funding from the Local Authority to meet the agreed outcomes.
