Mrs Miller is our school ALNCo, any concerns regarding Additional Learning Needs, please contact her on millerj67@hwbcymru.net

A guide for parents and carers of children with additional learning needs

Sketty Primary school values the abilities and achievements of all its pupils. All children are valued, respected and nurtured. We endeavour to provide the best educational opportunities for each child and strive to maximise their potential in a ‘can do’ learning culture.

ALN stands for Additional Learning Needs. At Sketty we recognise that all pupils come to school at different stages of development and with different needs. Whilst many factors contribute to the range of difficulties experienced by some children, we believe that much can be done to overcome them by parents, teachers and pupils working together.

The ALN aims of the school 

• To ensure that all pupils have access to a broad and balanced curriculum
• To provide a differentiated curriculum appropriate to the individual’s needs and ability
• To ensure that early identification of a pupil’s needs is made
• To ensure that ALN pupils take as full a part as possible in all school activities
• To ensure that parents of ALN pupils are fully involved from the beginning and are kept regularly informed of their child’s progress
• To ensure that ALN pupils are involved, where practical, in decisions affecting their future ALN provision

The principles underpinning our approach to ALN are:

• A rights-based approach where the views, wishes and feelings of the child, child’s parent or young person are central to the planning and provision of support. We have due regard to the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and also the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD)
• Early identification, intervention and prevention
• Collaboration and integration
• Inclusive education

In order for the school to determine whether a child has ALN, the following tests must be applied. The key questions that need to be asked are:

i)        Does the child or young person have a greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age?

ii)        Does the child or young person have a disability (within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010) which prevents or hinders the child or young person from making use of facilities for education or training of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream maintained schools or mainstream FEIs.

Pupils who meet our criteria for having ALN will require a graduated response through the following levels of support;

• School Action – an individual education plan (IEP) or learning plan will be set up with the parent and teacher
• School Action+ – specialist services are involved with the child’s specific and individual education/ learning plan
• IDP – The school (decision making panel) assess and agree that the pupil will receive targeted support and a pupil centered review takes place once a year to review progress.

ALN children will need additional or different support from that given to other children of the same age

At our school we constantly strive to provide support through Early Intervention that meets the needs of our learners. Here is a brief summary of the interventions we provide (for more info please click on the icons);

DCD group– for children who have problems with co-ordination and/or handwriting

Language Link programme– children identified with delayed understanding of language take part in individual/small group highly focused sessions

 

Wellcomm– all our nursery children are screened using the Wellcomm assessment tool which identifies children with delayed understanding and/or expression of language, these children are then supported through play based language activities

Social Skills Group– teaching social interaction skills and helping to improve mental health and well-being, through games and activities

• 

SpeechLink– enables teachers to check for delays in the development of speech sounds

Positive play/ Anxiety groups – highly trained staff, run individual and small group play therapy sessions to help children with mental health and well-being

Overcoming dyslexia/ Nessy – children who show dyslexic traits or characteristics or have a dyslexia diagnosis, have focused sessions to help with spellings and word building, also reinforced through online software

Numicon – children identified as having difficulty in maths, follow a catch up maths Numicon programme.