Special Educational Needs

At Chilham St Mary’s, every child is valued, respected, and warmly welcomed—whatever their individual needs may be. We believe in nurturing the whole child and are committed to providing a broad and balanced curriculum that enables all pupils to achieve their full potential.

We work closely with families to understand each child’s needs from the very beginning. This includes listening to you as parents, gathering early observations from class teachers, input from our SENCO, and ensuring your child’s own voice is heard. Together, this helps us build a clear and rounded picture of how your child is developing.

Supporting Learning

To support this, we use a combination of informal assessments and recognised screening tools. These include Star Reader (Renaissance) for reading, and assessments from maths.co.uk, as well as specialist screeners such as Speech and Language Link, Rapid GL (a dyslexia screener), and tools that help us identify phonological awareness, auditory memory and processing needs, and potential dyscalculia.

Alongside these assessments, we track every child’s attainment throughout the year on SONAR which is a primary education assessment and pupil progress platform developed by Juniper Education. This ongoing monitoring helps us understand their progress over time and highlights where additional support or adjustments to teaching may be helpful.

Supporting Well-being and Safeguarding

Your child’s well-being and safety are at the heart of everything we do. All staff are trained to notice when a child may need extra support, and we use a secure system called My Concern to record any safeguarding or well-being worries that arise. This allows us to keep information in one safe place and ensures that concerns—such as possible signs of abuse, neglect, mental health difficulties, or bullying—are monitored and followed up quickly by our DSLs.

To help us keep track of pupils’ emotional well-being, we use the Leuven Scales each term. This simple 1–5 scale helps us understand how engaged and settled children are in school. If a child’s score suggests they may be struggling, we work closely with them—and with you—to provide the right support.

Together, these approaches ensure we can respond quickly and effectively to your child’s needs, helping them to thrive in their learning.

We support children with their:

Learning needs
Social and emotional wellbeing
Communication and interaction (including speech and language)
Mental health
Physical and sensory development.

We are proud of our inclusive ethos and equality of opportunity for all. Our staff ensure all children are fully included in all school activities, on and off site, making full use of external facilities where appropriate.

Tiered Support Structure

At Chilham Primary, we offer four tiers of support across all classes to meet the diverse needs of our pupils.

Tier	Level of Support	Description	Reviews
1	Whole Class Support	Our teachers use adaptive teaching strategies that benefit all learners. Whole class provision maps identify children requiring targeted interventions to accelerate progress.	3 x a year
2	Monitoring Register	For children with emerging or low-level concerns. Needs are reviewed regularly and support adjusted as necessary.	3 x a year
3	Special Educational Needs (SEN-S) Register.	For children with more specific needs. A bespoke Personalised Learning Plan (PLP) is co-created by the SENCO, class teacher, parents, and — where appropriate — the child.	3 x a year
4	Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP)	For children with significant, complex, or ongoing needs. An Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) is issued by the Local Authority and supported by a PLP.	3 x a year and an Annual Review.

Graduated Approach

We follow the Graduated Approach as outlined in the SEN Code of Practice (2014), a continuous four-step cycle:

Assess – Identify the child’s needs
Plan – Design targeted interventions and set outcomes
Do – Implement the support plan
Review – Evaluate progress and refine strategies

This process ensures that support evolves with the child’s development.

Collaborative Support & External Expertise

As part of our Local Offer, we work closely with external professionals, including:

SEND Inclusion Advisor (SEN IA)	Alison Deeney (alison.deeney@kent.gov.uk)
Educational Psychologist (EP)	Nicki Carpenter (nicki.carpenter@kent.gov.uk)
Specialist Teaching and Learning Service (STLS).	Katy Harrington (katy.harrington@kent.gov.uk)
Speech and Language Therapist. (SALT)	Alice Limbert alice.limbert1@nhs.net Please see this link: Speech and Language Therapy Support at Chilham St Mary's

We recognise the importance of school staff, parents and children working together to ensure inclusive practice and success for every learner.

Our Team

Our skilled teaching assistants support learning across the school and lead targeted intervention programmes. All staff engage in ongoing professional development tailored to the needs of our pupils.

Whilst all of our teachers are responsible for and accountable for the progress and development of the pupils in their class, the SENCO’s role is to lead and support the identification of and provision for children with an identified Special Educational Need (SEN).

If you have any concerns about your child’s development or believe they may have a special need, you are welcome to contact our Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo), Mrs Vanessa Robinson: senco@chilham.kent.sch.uk

Our SEN Policy & SEN Information Report 2025-26 can be found on the Policies page.

Please click on the link below:

Policies | Chilham St Mary's C.E Primary School

Please click here to access our school policies