Helping teachers make the best decisions possible in how they plan, deliver and reflect on their lessons.
For me, this is the closest SENDCOs get to having a ‘silver bullet’. SENDCOs’ work is multi-faceted and varied, but a prime task within that, to have maximum reach and impact, must surely be supporting teachers to develop classroom teaching.
These 8 tips might support that desire to be enacted in reality.
- Get a clear and ongoing sense of current classroom provision
SENDCOs need to know what’s taking place in classrooms. We can survey our teachers, ask our TAs and analyse progress data, but it’s always limited unless SENDCOs are also regularly seeing practice in classrooms.
It may be worth SENCOs asking – ‘what would need to happen, for it to become normal that I dip into classrooms daily?’. While there are many tasks that rightly consume SENDCOs’ attention, monitoring teaching and learning closely is an important step in ensuring whole-school impact.
2. Invest in time with the Teaching and Learning lead
Let’s make the SENCO’s priorities everyone’s priorities. And let’s give teachers a clear message that good inclusive teaching is one thing, not two. That means a SENCO and T&L Lead jointly engaging with colleagues around what’s tricky and what support is required, jointly agreeing priorities for moving forwards and speaking a unified, coherent language about the school’s approach to teaching.
3. Don’t be the one with all the answers
SENCOs don’t need to be the experts in every area of teaching.
Thinking of all the required expertise in your setting, it’s unlikely that the SENDCO is the number one expert in maths, PE and Art. Similarly, it’s unlikely that the SENDCO is the number one expert in modelling, questioning and giving feedback.
In practice, that means SENDCOs supporting other leaders to lead for 100% of pupils in their care. Driving T&L as a SENCO isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about working with leaders of phase or subject to help them to lead their areas for pupils with SEND. In practice, that might mean joint learning walks with middle leaders, co-developing plans to improve practice and leaning on the expertise of other experts in your setting.
4. Look to evidence and high-quality resources that already exist
We’re perhaps a sector that reinvents wheels too much already. With inclusive teaching, no one is starting on page 1.
Though it will depend on your setting and its priorities, you might start with the Teacher Handbook from NASEN, the Five-a-day approach from the EEF or the Inclusive Teaching Framework from Ambition Institute. You might even look beyond SEND-specific resources/evidence bases, exploring this one-pager on Adaptive Teaching from Education Southwest or the guidance reports from the EEF on literacy and maths.
5. Ensure what you’re asking for is doable
There can be ‘death by strategies’ if we’re not careful. If each pupil with SEND has their own 6-8 individual strategies, and teachers see at least 10 (and perhaps up to 100) pupils with SEND in their week, we need to recognise the limits of using multiple individual strategies as our response to meeting increasing needs. The approaches teachers are asked to take, and the strategies they’re being asked to adopt, need to be implementable in reality.
We also need to avoid ‘magic answer’ strategies. SENCOs should communicate the importance of an Assess-Plan-Do-Review mindset, developing curious minds in colleagues and an expectation of ‘going again’, rather than an expectation of ever reaching perfection in their practice.
6. Plan CPD as a process, not an event
A useful success criterion for CPD is that teachers’ practice in classrooms develops, and that those developments are sustained over time.
For behaviour change to take place across multiple classrooms, from multiple colleagues and for it to be sustained over several terms or longer, we can see why putting on one twilight CPD session is unlikely to cut it.
It is more likely to need a carefully thought-through process. This process might start with engaging colleagues and analysing current practice, so that the right problem is being addressed, and so that it’s a jointly-agreed priority. It will become a sequence of supports for teachers that build knowledge, motivate staff, develop teaching techniques and embed practice (EEF, 2021). This sequence may include a whole-staff twilight, but won’t be only that.
The EEF’s work around professional development and implementation may be useful here, as well as the work of CUREE. Understanding this research will lead to SENDCOs not only putting on a good twilight, but also supporting teachers to take risks, to discuss challenges, to receive recognition and praise, and to see what ‘good’ can look like.
7. Use current strengths
No school is starting from scratch around inclusive teaching; no setting is without its own pockets of strength. Where teachers are told that new approaches are entirely new and don’t link to current practices at all, the level of change required can be overwhelming.
SENDCOs will do well to understand where their desired changes in practice are largely in place already. They might consider how to use these colleagues to make the desired changes in practice feel a little more realistic to those who feel overwhelmed about meeting pupil needs.
And when thinking of these colleagues, it will be about the strategies and approaches they enact (‘the what’), but we should also consider the personal qualities they bring to the role – calmness, positivity, patience and compassion – that help them to meet needs in class.
8. Understand where answers lie beyond the gates
Though so much expertise lies in schools already, SENDCOs will consider where external support is needed. That might be through joining local or national networks such as Whole Education, developing links to local special or mainstream settings, and using the limited time of external specialists for joint-working that focuses on developing teaching and learning.
Gary Aubin is author of The Lone SENDCO and co-author of The Parent’s Guide to SEND.
SEND Matters 