Training & Support
SEND is front of mind for many schools when it comes to quality of inclusive education. Ministries, authority bodies, schools and the wider education community are increasingly recognising the scale and importance of supporting learners with SEND through an inclusive education offering. As an example, an article in the TES this time last year noted the huge strides that schools have made in their SEND provision within the UAE whilst acknowledging that there is still work to be done. This sentiment resonates with colleagues across the wider MENA region, Europe and Asia as they focus on how best to meet the needs of their learners.
An important part of getting things right for learners with SEND (which could represent 10-25% of every class) relates to identifying and understanding their needs; helping teachers to make informed decisions to improve outcomes for these learners.
Adopting consistent systems and processes helps to build strategy and alignment to deliver results and get things done. Whether in a large multi-cohort international school or a smaller rural school, best practice for SEND is the same and offers the same strong foundations for inclusive education.
By triangulating data from universal assessments, alongside wider contextual evidence to identify specific strengths and challenges, you can more accurately and effectively determine the most appropriate adaptations and interventions to meet the needs of all learners within your classroom.
We have lots of tools that can support the use of assessment for identification, here are just a few:
- CAT4 Learner Guide – an interactive tool to help you to better understand and support learners with different ability profiles
- Reading Support Pathway - Designed around the essential building blocks of reading, this tool helps you understand the nuances of reading needs, allowing you to fine-tune support for your students.
- PASS interventions - contains practical advice and strategies to help address problems that students may be struggling with in terms of the nine PASS factors. This resource includes information about how a learner’s perceptions may present in the classroom, questions to think about from a whole school, class and individual level, and an overview of the research underpinning the different strategies suggested.
- SEND Guide - helps support your identification processes by guiding you to the most appropriate screeners using a few simple filters.
Inclusion begins with understanding, and these resources provide practical tools to help schools on their journey to support every learner effectively. By leveraging tools designed to help make timely and well-informed decisions, educators can build data-driven systems that accurately identify and put learners needs first.
