Special educational needs

Special educational needs

Special educational needs

Information for parents
All our schools aim to provide for the individual learning needs of each pupil through their school policies and classroom practice. Many children at some time in their school lives will need extra help to ensure that they learn effectively and make progress.

A range of support is available according to the nature and seriousness of a child's needs. Sometimes this support can be provided by the school and sometimes it may involve other specialists. However, staff external to the school will only be involved with the full agreement of parents.

Meeting your child's needs
After talking with parents, the school will look at how it can best use its resources to meet a child's needs; each school has a budget expressly for this purpose. It may then be necessary for the Head teacher and staff to seek support from the Local Education Authority's specialist teachers.

There are teams who work with children and their teachers in mainstream schools. One team support children who experience difficulties with literacy; another supports children whose behaviour is unsettled and third works with children with a visual, hearing or speech and language impairment.

The school may also wish to ask advice from an educational psychologist. This will only happen with parental agreement.

Some children have longer term difficulties and do not make the progress we would like even with this help. It may be necessary to carry out a statutory assessment of their special educational needs which may result in a statement being drawn up. The statement lays out a plan for meeting the individual's needs, including how the resources should be used.

Children may receive support either in a mainstream primary school or attends a special school. This depends on the outcome of the assessment, to which parents will have contributed their views.

Special schools
Some children's needs will be met best in a special school. Hammersmith & Fulham has five special schools and three mainstream primary schools with special units which provide for children with statements of special educational needs. Each school provides for a different range of needs.

Because Hammersmith & Fulham is a very small education authority, we may not have exactly the right kind of provision within the borough, so some children may attend special schools in other boroughs. The listing of special schools and units are for information only. Parents cannot apply directly to these schools for places.

Special school contact details

For general enquiries about special educational needs phone 020 8753 3754.

Information and advice is also available from the parent partnership service on 020 8753 3509 (9.30am - 5pm, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) and 020 8753 5914 (9.30am - 5pm, Tuesday).