*Please see below for our SEN policies and our SEN information report*

SEND stands for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

A child or young person of compulsory school age is defined as SEND if they have a special educational need/learning difficulty or a disability.  This can be:

1. If they have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age; or
2. If they have a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions.

Children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities may need extra help or support, or special provision made for them to allow them to have the same opportunities as others of the same age.  If a child or young person has special educational needs or disabilities their needs will fall into one or more of the following four areas:

Communication and interaction

• Speech, language and communication needs (SLCN)
• Autism

Cognition and learning

• Specific learning difficulty (SpLD)
• Moderate learning difficulty (MLD)
• Severe learning difficulty (SLD)
• Profound and multiple learning difficulty (PMLD)

Emotional, social and mental health

• Attachment difficulties
• Social and emotional difficulties
• Mental health issues
• Attention and hyperactivity difficulties

Physical and sensory

• Visual impairment (VI)
• Hearing impairment (HI)
• Multi-sensory impairment (MSI/Deafblind)
• Physical disability (PD)

Children whose needs fall into a mixture of these four categories are considered to have ‘complex needs’. A child may also be described as having ‘mild’ or ‘severe’ learning difficulties depending on the degree of their needs and the impact they have on their lives.