Earlier this week, a new survey from the Confederation of School Trust revealed that 73 per cent of members said inclusion and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are the most important thing to them this academic year - an increase from 56 per cent in the previous year.

This need to focus on inclusion and SEND is something we at our growing coastal trust have had to do a lot more work on over the past few years, too, as we have seen the number of pupils with SEND rise from just under 20 per cent to over 25 per cent across our schools.

This has driven a number of important changes to ensure we are doing everything we can to support their needs. This is what we have done:

Adaptations and need

At a base level, we have increased the number of specialist provision places for pupils with complex SEND in our schools from 80 to 153.

This has meant thinking creatively about curriculum, employing staff with the right expertise and ensuring greater inclusivity throughout our schools to ensure all pupils, regardless of their individual needs, feel a sense of belonging.

We are also seeing increasing numbers of children arrive at secondary schools three to five years behind their peers - children who are 11 who are working at the level of a six-year-old.

This has led us to create bespoke curriculum models, for example, our primary-style Nest provision in one of our secondary schools offers provision for up to 10 pupils with education, health and care plans for cognition and learning needs.

As part of this, we have also invested in careers education so that our pupils with SEND can access meaningful post-16 qualifications.

Careers and CPD

Alongside this, we’ve reviewed our staffing.

We appointed our first director of inclusion in September 2022, and we’ve hired specialist teachers, typically those with a primary background, to support Year 7 classes, and additional specialist teachers from the special school sector to support our developing provision.

We’ve also looked at the wider support on hand for children, developing the expertise of education support staff, and moving away from the role of teaching assistants.

This has meant developing support staff to become expert practitioners in both classroom and intervention provision and developing specialist leads in the four key areas of SEND.

In addition, we have invested in significant partnerships with national SEND experts to ensure that the SEND team has access to the latest practice.

We have also set up a separate support call system for pupils with SEND so specialist staff can support teachers when pupils with SEND are disrupting learning. This has meant we have been better able to support children who are dysregulated, rather than seeing situations escalate.

Buildings and space

Turning to the building itself, we’ve invested £300,000 in new spaces to support needs, including therapy rooms and sensory rooms. Our secondary students with SEND are also able to use our primary forest school provision within the trust.

We’ve also developed a new part-time provision, called The Bridge, for children who have profound mental health needs and are non-attenders.

One hundred per cent of pupils increased their attendance in comparison with their time in mainstream, with their average attendance increasing from 34 per cent to 70 per cent.

We have invested in a trust-wide app to provide mental wellbeing support for all students in our secondaries and increased the volume of counselling for those who have mental health issues.

Finally, we know families want to understand more about the support their child will get with us, and so have also created separate websites for parents and carers, setting out our SEND support plans in each school.

These changes represent a huge programme of work and deep commitment to being a truly inclusive trust - collectively they are making a difference, but we are always looking for further ways to deepen our practice and challenge ourselves to go further so that we know we are doing everything in our power to support every child.

Seamus Murphy is CEO of Turner Schools Trust

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